New Xbox 360 “Slim” Motherboard Spy Pics?

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Pictures of what is supposed to be a new Xbox 360 motherboard have popped up in the forums of a Chinese website. I know, I know, these could be totally fake…but they are still fun to look at. Notice the small heatsink for what appears to be a GPU and CPU combo?
 
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A number of things bothers me about this but here are the ones nagging at me:

1.) sheer lack of components on the board (caps/resistors/etc.)
2.) AV, USB, LAN and power connectors on the back don't look right
3.) combo CPU / GPU with such a wimply cooling set up?

etc. etc.
 
Was the 360 GPU and CPU always single chip? Looks like theres only 1 chip beneath the heatsink or am i just completely missing something?
 
I thought Microsoft was eventually going to unite the CPU and GPU into one silicon package, a' la' Intel i3, on the motherboard release after Jasper.
 
A number of things bothers me about this but here are the ones nagging at me:

1.) sheer lack of components on the board (caps/resistors/etc.)
2.) AV, USB, LAN and power connectors on the back don't look right
3.) combo CPU / GPU with such a wimply cooling set up?

etc. etc.

I remember the GPU not having any cooling, which cause the RROD problems.
It seems they combined the CPU and GPU on one chip. Good to see a actual heatsink this time around.
 
A number of things bothers me about this but here are the ones nagging at me:

1.) sheer lack of components on the board (caps/resistors/etc.)
2.) AV, USB, LAN and power connectors on the back don't look right
3.) combo CPU / GPU with such a wimply cooling set up?

etc. etc.

it only has to do 1280x720 without AA at 20-30fps. The 360 is pretty shitty on graphics power.
 
The slim version (if such thing exists) would most likely have the Valhalla chip, which includes the GPU and CPU on the same die.

Also, the back connectors would most likely be changed around, so because they are not the same layout doesn't mean anything.
 
If that is real, I say bravo!

That is so much simpler that the previous generations of board. This will be so much easier to keep cool.

I doubt that cooler config would be the final shipping product. I would expect something a bit more unconventional to fit a custom slim profile case.

It will happen sooner or later. Once they combine the CPU and the GPU onto one chip the rest of the 360 should be able to fit on a very small motherboard. There is only 512MB RAM and the USB controller for the ports. Add the ethernet controller and the wireless controller transmit/receive and you are done. (Hopefully in a major re-working of the box they would add an 802.11N wireless chip and some chassis mounted antennae.)
 
If they were going for a slim design you would think it would make more sense to mount the fan on the heatsink's sides rather than on top of it. Maybe not though. It's tough to gauge how tall it is. Still, if this turned out to be real I'd be all for it, as long as it doesn't red ring :).
 
A number of things bothers me about this but here are the ones nagging at me:

1.) sheer lack of components on the board (caps/resistors/etc.)
2.) AV, USB, LAN and power connectors on the back don't look right
3.) combo CPU / GPU with such a wimply cooling set up?

etc. etc.

If you look at the first picture in the top right, looks like a power connector to me, too big to be anything else...
 
WorldExclusive said:
I remember the GPU not having any cooling, which cause the RROD problems.

Not exactly. The red ring was more or less caused by Microsoft using a funky clamp to fasten the GPU and CPU's heatsinks, which could become slightly warped/dislodged after enough time and heat. The basic way to fix that kind of RROD was to chunk the clamps and replace them with evenly distributed washers, screws, and nuts. It wasn't that they didn't have heatsinks, but just that they're fastener was finnicky.
 
first consumer iteration of the ATI fusion platform?

win
 
Not exactly. The red ring was more or less caused by Microsoft using a funky clamp to fasten the GPU and CPU's heatsinks, which could become slightly warped/dislodged after enough time and heat. The basic way to fix that kind of RROD was to chunk the clamps and replace them with evenly distributed washers, screws, and nuts. It wasn't that they didn't have heatsinks, but just that they're fastener was finnicky.

the clamps were only one small part of a group of problems that led to such high rates of rrod. The lead free solder they used is just as much to blame if not moreso for the ridiculously high failure rates they have experienced. It also didnt help that the gpu heatsink was undersized and the gimpy plastic shroud didnt draw airflow through the cpu or gpu sinks nearly as well as it did from the quarter inch gap between the shroud and the forementioned sinks.
 
+1 to the lead problem..

it lookes incrediable fake..

they have a contract with IBM, so a little problem there and the billions..

games wont run faster, may load faster but wont run faster.. also they cant change the core count either.. well that would mean 4 threaded games and people with them would have and advantage and someone would cry fould.. they allways do, and one huge law suite comming up.

and best an improved architecture to get 5~10% performance boost and a heck of lot cooler and a die shrink... plus a few new power regulators and dump the caps...

gphx qual will stay the same till next gen.. i have both the 360 and ps3, i love the 360 in terms of gaphix.. ps3 not so much, some just seems wrong with the image..

my first 360 had 2 heatsinks

my second had 1 (across both)

the biggest problem witht eh 360 is the cheapass dvd drive.. use the drive and game you got a dust buster and heat.. load it to the hdd and its so dam quiet its amazing and speed..


things m$ need to do,

1. Sell an hdd housing so yo can install your own hdds. and allow back ups of current hds to external hds..

2. Release a blue-ray external player, seriously the software and encryption wont be that hard with 3 cores.. it playd hd-dvds encoded in h264, br wont be much harder.. and allow people to get the internal drive upgraded at xbox360 repair places to br players... dont claim you want it to be a home media centre and not do anything about it..
 
not to mention running games from the hdd and the whole box is cool to the touch

games wont run faster, may load faster but wont run faster.. also they cant change the core count either.. well that would mean 4 threaded games and people with them would have and advantage and someone would cry fould.. they allways do, and one huge law suite comming up.

all games released for the 360 have to work on all 360s or they wont sell.. so no 4 cores for you sunny boy.. or 6.. or a new gphx processor.. and best one with integrated hdmi and slightly faster efficiency.. but still all games for it must work on all.. so no new 360..

the next one should have 8 cores, 58series gphx card... and power management to shut down cores not in use.. replacable hdd at customers discretion to any size they want...
 
If they were going for a slim design you would think it would make more sense to mount the fan on the heatsink's sides rather than on top of it. Maybe not though. It's tough to gauge how tall it is. Still, if this turned out to be real I'd be all for it, as long as it doesn't red ring :).

You do realize this is an Engineering sample right? The manufacturer will take this motherboard and slap it on an open air bench to test it. It may or may not be a final revision. As such, they probably won't bother creating a case and custom cooling for it, they will simply slap on a cheap heatsink that fits and keeps it cool enough.

first consumer iteration of the ATI fusion platform?

win
NO. This is not Fusion.

Fusion is a product of AMD. It combines an AMD x86 capable CPU with an AMD GPU on the same die. The XBox360 utilizes an AMD designed GPU with a 3 core IBM PowerPC CPU. The CPU's have an entirely different instruction set and architecture and are no where near the same as an AMD or Intel CPU. AMD only designed the XBox360 chip, they don't build them. Even if they built just the GPU, they don't have a license from IBM to make PowerPC chips and therefore couldn't produce this single chip "Valhalla" that is seen here. Also, since we cannot see under the heatspreader of this Valhalla chip, we cannot tell if it is indeed a fused chip, or simply a multi-chip module. My money is this is a MCM.
 
In the unlikely event these are real, lets hope MS does the opposite of Sony and makes a slim 360 that doesn't look like crap. I would kill to have a 360 that actually looks nice like the original PS3 did.
 
Hm, regardless if it's fake or not, if they fix the DVD drive + Fans that made it sound like a podracer, than I'll be for it.
 
My fans never made a lot of noise. My dvd drive does though.
 
You do realize this is an Engineering sample right? The manufacturer will take this motherboard and slap it on an open air bench to test it. It may or may not be a final revision. As such, they probably won't bother creating a case and custom cooling for it, they will simply slap on a cheap heatsink that fits and keeps it cool enough.

NO. This is not Fusion.

Fusion is a product of AMD. It combines an AMD x86 capable CPU with an AMD GPU on the same die. The XBox360 utilizes an AMD designed GPU with a 3 core IBM PowerPC CPU. The CPU's have an entirely different instruction set and architecture and are no where near the same as an AMD or Intel CPU. AMD only designed the XBox360 chip, they don't build them. Even if they built just the GPU, they don't have a license from IBM to make PowerPC chips and therefore couldn't produce this single chip "Valhalla" that is seen here. Also, since we cannot see under the heatspreader of this Valhalla chip, we cannot tell if it is indeed a fused chip, or simply a multi-chip module. My money is this is a MCM.

That's pretty much true.

If AMD and IBM were to work together to design and help build a GPU-CPU combo for the 360, wouldn't that information have been leaked by now or made into the news channels in some way?

But,have to consider a couple things:
- IBM implemented their own version of Hyperthreading different from Intel's approach in their newer PowerPC CPUs, just as AMD is doing with "Bulldozer"-- dual core, 8 thread approach or 4 core, 16 thread or 8 threads, etc. Did both work together or share design ideas there?

- AMD is working on "Llano"-- APU + DX11 GPU on-chip CPU.

It would probably make sense if they worked together to test a GPU+CPU combo on the same chip, and not multi-chip under a single heatspreader like the lower end i3 and i5 from Intel.
 
They dropped the requirements for both 720p and 2xAA years ago.

Cool story Bro. Yes, on new games those requirements have been dropped. On old games that people will want to have work in their xbox 360 slim will still need those requirements meet in order to work. So no offense, but, your point is?

For example, Perfect Dark Zero was a near launch-day xbox 360 game that uses 720p + 2xaa. When Perfect Dark Zero 2 or whatever the inevitable sequel will be called comes out from Rare, people will want to go back and play PDZ. People would be upset if this title didn't work on their xbox 360 slim so the xbox 360 slim will need to be able to render the game at 720p with the 2xAA. The only exception would be if Microsoft goes through on about 20 titles that have this requirement and patch those many first year and part of second year's worth of games to make a lower-resolution, lower-aa version for the xbox 360 slim. Not impossible per say but a software challenge which might be cheaper to meet by making the xbox 360 slim's hardware equal to the xbox 360 original. Not to mention PDZ is a Platnium hits title which means people will still keep buying it over time for relatively cheap and want to play the product they've bought on an xbox 360 slim.
 
My personal wish is this would end up being AMD Fusion of some kind and this is an extremely early prototype/test for a DX11 based console that might be available for sale in say 2 years? Announced at this years E3 for showing at next year's E3 and release soon after? *I wish*. It would be great for PC gamers as we'd see a lot more DX11 based titles :)
 
...that would mean 4 threaded games...


The Xbox 360 CPU is 3 core with two thread per core processing. But, point of example taken.

What MS needs to do next round is not rush their product out just to be first to launch (or they end up nearly pulling an Atari Jaguar).


When Perfect Dark Zero 2 or whatever the inevitable sequel will be called comes out from Rare

I'm not sure that PDZ sold well enough to justify a sequel. I know it was panned and considered "meh" to many (I enjoyed it enough...still have my collectors edition copy), but besides them "giving" us the NXE dashboard (I STILL hate the design, I want the blades back!) I'm not sure they'll make another PD game (the PD release for XBLA is done by 4J).
 
A better question is, did the original 360 have a heatsink at all? Can't really tell by the amount of RRODs that people were getting...

With the GPU's heatsink, they might as well not have had one. I've seen better coolers on a $40 passive vidcard.
 
I'm not sure who would make the CPU+GPU combo. IBM owns the rights to Xenon including the operations, but can't make the GPU. AMD can make a CPU+GPU, but can't legally make Xenon. It would have to be a rights transfer of some sort...

However, if these are real, this new model looks to be about 2/3 or less the size of the current 360.

On a side note, I have an original batch 360 I got Thanksgiving week 2005 and happy to say have never had an issue.
 
Meh......nothing to see.....move along please. Even if it's not a fake, a re-design and "slimming" of the same console means nothing to me. Show me the next gen. I suppose if I still didn't have a 360 and wanted one, I might care enough to wait a bit......but how many new customers are there out there six years later?
 
Meh......nothing to see.....move along please. Even if it's not a fake, a re-design and "slimming" of the same console means nothing to me. Show me the next gen. I suppose if I still didn't have a 360 and wanted one, I might care enough to wait a bit......but how many new customers are there out there six years later?

you make a good point, the xbox360 is still selling very well, do we need another 360? probably not most people are happy with price options and the 360 covers all of them.
 
...but how many new customers are there out there six years later?
Potentially, quite a few. Of course, if a slim version isn't accompanied by a price cut it won't entice anyone (something of which I'm sure Microsoft is aware). If it is, the 360 could very well get a nice boost.
 
Potentially, quite a few. Of course, if a slim version isn't accompanied by a price cut it won't entice anyone (something of which I'm sure Microsoft is aware). If it is, the 360 could very well get a nice boost.

I still haven't picked one up, I might if they release a Slim version. With the whole RROD fiasco I decided I didn't want to bother with any potential headache from a console that could easily up and die on me... So I bought a PS3 instead. :D
 
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