Yesterday, DigiTimes reported that the 65nm Xenos GPU was going to hit production this fall, this comes after news that the 65nm Xenon CPU would also be coming in mid 2007. This is great news for Microsoft mainly because the move to 65nm for the CPU and GPU means that they will see a substantial cost reduction in the 360 manufacturing process. Smaller dies means more chips per run of silicon, therefor its cheaper to produce each chip.
Now that the “what it is” is out of the way, let me clear up some misconceptions REALLY QUICK. Because I’m sick of reading people bash microsoft with mostly 99% false statements, so let me clear the most common ones up…
- First of all, ALL CONSOLES recieve hardware revisions like smaller processor and gpu’s its part of COST reductions for the company.
- The 65nm chips will be included in ALL NEW CONSOLES, not just elites or some other sku, no all new Core/Premium/Elite consoles will all recieve the 65nm chips and the 90nm will be phased out no new SKUs!
- The move to 65nm will indeed mean the chips will run cooler, the issue is cooler doesn’t necessarily mean quieter. The main source of noise on the 360 are that some of them ship with various brands of dvd drives. If you want quite cross your fingers for one of the newer dvd drives (hitachi’s are quietest so far), you want a quiet dvd drive, not 65nm if its sound your concerned with!
- The new chips will add special functionality to the newer consoles, and they’ll be faster. F-A-L-S-E!!! The chips are IDENTICAL logic wise and speed wise, as with any revision like this its just cost reduction, not an upgrade to performance or features.
- The failure rate will go down, this is pretty much a old-wives tale. the fact is their was a problem on the initial batch over a year ago that caused a higher than average failure rate randomly. The fact is since then microsoft has extended warrantys and made substantial leaps to help those people, while yes heat was the main cause, and the new chips will be cooler, the fact is the latest consoles for the last 6-8 months have been shipping and working well within normal failure rates. Why do we hear about people on the internet with Red Ring of Deaths? Thats simple, people with problems are vocal and complain, people who their consoles are working sit at home and use their console hapily and have no nead to complain online.
There is one thing that is being rumored that does have some credit to it, a price drop is coming. But the fact is it’s not specifically due to the 65nm chips. Yes thats helping it come but its not the reason, the fact is Microsoft now has 2 competitors on the market and has been selling for 1.5 years, so its just time for a price cut soon. They’ve been doing their small hardware revisions and behind the scenes work to reduce the manufacturing costs, the 65nm moves are the next step in that. With 1.5-2 years of cost cutting of the manufaturing process the fact is Microsoft will be able to afford a price cut. The other reason I forsee the pricecut coming is that it appears microsoft is preparing a culmination of events. 65nm revisions, many Q3/Q4 2007 blockbuster games on the way, the elite launch it’s all leading up to an across the board price cut to really help move consoles. This christmas will once again see the 360 lead the way I can almost guarantee it.
Source: DigiTimes
