Falcon 65nm Chips Land In Mean Green 360 Machines

Submitted by Paul Munn on October 1, 2007 – 3:15 pm6 Comments

The green, Halo Special Edition Xbox 360 sure is ugly when you compare it to the nice black Elite and white Premium/Core models but it’s what’s on the inside that really matters. One enterprising gamer found out just how beautiful the inside of their new Halo 3 themed 360 is by opening it up and discovering the new Falcon 65nm chip beneath a new heat sink design. The Kotaku story (link below) talks about the lot numbers and manufacture dates for the system.

I talked about why the introduction of the new chips is a bittersweet event last week, but I’ll just say there’s still time for Microsoft to do right by its loyal fan base and allow a trade-in or something similar. I think even if gamers had to pay a little something in addition to shipping they’d do so to get the peace of mind. That assumes, of course, that the new chips mean the end of the red rings of death for the Xbox 360.

Via Kotaku.

http://www.aeropause.com George

Wow, so much Xbox hate from you lately, Paul.

Being a proud owner of a Halo 3 edition 360, I think it looks great.

It should also be noted that the CPU is 65nm, but the GPU is still 90nm. And it’s the soldering on the GPU that has been suspect in the overheating issues, so I don’t see why MS would offer any kind of trade-in.

Should Sony offer trade-ins for people who bought the now obsolete 20GB PS3′s?
http://eklipse.net Mike

Do the 20GB PS3′s do everything that is advertised on the box?

A RRoD’d 360 doesn’t do ANYTHING advertised on the box.

Personally, I think even offering a trade-in with money is ridiculous. The users should get their hardware replaced AT NO COST to that which will not die. Selling broken hardware is ridiculous. If you bought your brand-new car from Honda, Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, GM, etc. and it had a chance that one day you would try to start it and won’t be able to start, ever again, then I think you would turn in the vehicle for FREE repair by the manufacturer. In fact, that’s what does go on these days. It’s called recalls.

As a hardware manufacturer, I could NOT fathom selling hardware with such a huge design flaw. If I did that to any customer, they would find a new provider for their hardware and never do business with me again. Unfortunately, in this environment games only run on one console, so if you want the game you have to have the corresponding console. If the PS3 hadn’t stumbled so hard out of the gate, I think this situation would be quite different and the response against/from Microsoft different as well.
http://www.aeropause.com George

But what Paul is suggesting is that Microsoft offer a replacement 360 with a 65nm CPU for anyone that has a functioning 90nm CPU. For defective systems with RRoD Microsoft has already extended the warranty to 3 years and offered replacements.

Your erroneous assumption is that ALL 90nm boxes are defective. I have two 90nm boxes sitting right here that have never have a problem. Why should MS agree to replace them at no charge to me? That is just silly.

You are also forgetting that ANY device will fail in a certain amount of time. No car manufacturer will give you an unlimited, unending warranty. The simple fact is that any device CAN fail on day one. That is what the warranty is there to protect against in the first place.
Joe (Aeropause)

Did Sony swap out all those PS2s that had DRE messages? No. It would be impractical for them, and I would not expect it. Are there a fair amount of units out there that break – Yes. Do all of them break – No.

My 360 is a near launch 360 and it has run quite well. It does get a bit loud when playing certain games like Dead Rising, but it runs well.

To me, it is irrelevate to get the 90nm or the 65nm, because either way, I have another 14 months of warranty coverage.
http://eklipse.net Mike

Does every car experience the problem in a recall? No, but every car gets the fix free-of-charge, if handled during the recall time period, and not, say, 15 years later.

Once the hardware design flaws have been fixed and a complete solution is available, I think that it should be offered from Microsoft to have your Xbox360 replaced, at no charge.

For me, almost every person I know who has had a 360 has experienced the RRoD for one reason or another. It’s too high of failure rate for me to say “coincidence” and just brush it off. It’s like knowing that the current model year of a car has a known problem that has a high rate of occurring with say the engine or the transmission, and next year’s model won’t have that issue. Sucks to be everyone who bought this year’s, since next years will cost the same amount and actually work!
http://www.aeropause.com George

“Once the hardware design flaws have been fixed and a complete solution is available, I think that it should be offered from Microsoft to have your Xbox360 replaced, at no charge.”

Which Microsoft has already agreed to do, once your console has had a problem, just like every other electronic device on the market.

Also, your car analogy breaks down in that product recalls only occur when the consumers’ safety could be at risk. For example, the original Xbox power cable recall, Sony’s exploding laptop batteries, and in the case of vehicles, when something can cause physical injury.

So, this notion that Microsoft should just recall 10 million consoles and ship 10 million brand new replacements is neither realistic nor practical in any way shape or form. It’s just never going to happen.