DailyTech - Xbox 360 to Get 65nm "Falcon" Makeover This Fall

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Gadgets Xbox 360 to Get 65nm "Falcon" Makeover This Fall
Brandon Hill (Blog) - July 9, 2007 2:17 PM

68 comment(s) - last by Hawkido.. on Jul 16 at 1:27 PM

"Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon." Microsoft prepares 65nm chips for Xbox 360

When it comes to Microsoft's Xbox 360, Dean Takahashi always seems to have the inside scoop. He was the first to spill the beans on Xbox 360 IPTV and provided confirmation on the existence of the Xbox 360 Elite.

Today, Takahashi confirmed that Microsoft's upcoming 65nm die shrink for the Xbox 360's microprocessor and GPU is codenamed "Falcon." Takahashi reports that Microsoft is currently qualifying the new Falcon chips along with a redesigned motherboard. The 65nm-equipped Xbox 360s are due to hit store shelves this fall.

The new chips are not only smaller and roughly 50 percent cheaper to produce than their 90nm counterpart, but they are also cooler. Cooler-running chips coupled with a revised cooling solution would go a long way to eradicating the Xbox 360’s fatal flaw: the Red Ring of Death (RROD).

Heat has been a big problem with the Xbox 360 and has been the root cause of RROD cases around the globe. Microsoft has countered the RROD failures by increasing the warranty of the console, adding various "warranty enhancements" and beefed up cooling solutions on new production Xbox 360 units.

Microsoft ultimately caved in to mounting pressure from the Xbox 360 community on RROD failures and announced a $1 billion initiative to service Xbox 360s afflicted with the problem and extended warranty coverage for those machines to three years.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

why is this news?

By Gul Westfale on 7/9/2007 5:38:45 PM , Rating: 0

isn't it normal for a company to do a die shrink when the tech becomes available, in order to cut costs?

with CPU makers that is important to know (for overclocking purposes, energy consumption in a SFF PC, etc), but in a console the performance of the machine will be the same. the only thing that changes is that MS might at the same time try to resolve some reliability issues they are having wit the machine, or maybe they are going to use quieter fans now.

none of that has been reported on yet though, so i'm not going to say yay or nay on this die shrink until we know whether the entire machine is improved or whether MS is just trying to save money by shrinking the die.