Xbox 360 Slim Teardown & Noise Test

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The crew at PC Perspective have taken apart one of the new Xbox 360 S consoles. I like the way they did an audio comparison between the old Xbox 360 and the new. I don’t want to ruin it but there is actually a big difference. Make sure you check it out.
 
Its kinda funny, I know when my kid gets up to play the X-Box. Even though he is being quiet w/ the volume down, I can still hear the machine. Crazy loud. Glad to see an improvement. Next up, the Water Cooled X-Box Waif.
 
I know its much quieter than the original 360, but how does it compare to the Jasper units?
 
My son's Falcon 360 fakes me out sometimes as it makes me think he is actually vacuuming the play room!!

Anandtech already went over this a few days ago as well as talked about lower power consumption http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb-xbox-360-slim/3..

The new Xbox 360 consumes less than half the power of the original 360! While spinning a disc the old Jasper was absurdly loud it is more bearable on the new 360.
Click to expand...

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With the reductions in process size, thermal envelope and better cooling, they should have bumped frequencies a little bit just to smooth out minimum framerates on some of the games.

One can dream
 
I am not impressed with the power consumption figures. My laptop uses some 14 Watts at idle (non switchable graphics) with the screen off in Windows 7. Standby (not OFF, Standby) 0.1 Watts. Load - around 55 watts in a game.

My laptop's an Envy 15 with juniper core graphics (ATI 5770) that can run 750/1115 core/memory without breaking a sweat. CPU is a Core i5-540M.

Basically it will wipe the floor with the x360 in any processing department you could think of.

Off
Laptop: 0.0 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 1.3 Watts
Standby
Laptop: 0.1 Watts --- new x360 Slim: n/a
Idle
Laptop: 14 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 70.9 Watts
Game Load
Laptop: 60 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 99.2 Watts

(screen off on laptop all tests)

I recognize the differences in cost (also remember the x360 price is subsidized by Microsoft, I bought my laptop at a profit to HP,) the differences in technology, application, etc.

But you gotta say, that is pretty disappointing. It's a hog for not so great performance.

I did a test and can downclock my CPU and GPU to levels which about approximate the x360's performance, by setting the graphics in a few games (Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, GTA 4) to graphics that as closly match the x360 as possible and approximatively matching frame rates. I get the lappy down to about 30W LOAD on average.

What's the deal? Was MS limited by the old CPU and GPU architectures?

71W at idle?!? My damn 800W total A/V receiver uses half that at idle. The lappy like 1/5 that.
 
The Foxconn 360 should really use less power, I guess all the parts are on old processes.
 
I'm not great at math so would someone help me out on this... No I'm not knocking the article.

At idle, where we are simply sitting at the Xbox Dashboard, the new Xbox 360 S is only drawing 70 watts while the older Xbox 360 nearly hit 100 watts resulting in a 40% drop in power consumption. Finally, under a gaming load, I found the Xbox 360 S to top out at around 99.2 watts while the Falcon-based system nearly hit 130 watts resulting in a 30% advantage for the updated console.
Click to expand...

so 70 is 40% less then 100 and 99.2 is 30% less then 130? When I do the math that seems off by more then a hair. Hows that math work?
 
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moro said:
I'm not great at math so would someone help me out on this... No I'm not knocking the article.



so 70 is 40% less then 100 and 99.2 is 30% less then 130? When I do the math that seems off by more then a hair. Hows that math work?
Click to expand...

yeah, looks like they are off there...

also I wonder why they measured it against a Falcons power consumption instead of with a Jasper motherboard.
 
moro said:
so 70 is 40% less then 100 and 99.2 is 30% less then 130? When I do the math that seems off by more then a hair. Hows that math work?
Click to expand...

You're doing the math from the wrong direction, just like the article. 100 is 40% more than 70 (70x1.4=98), 129 is 30% more than 99 (99x1.3=129).
 
okashira said:
I am not impressed with the power consumption figures. My laptop uses some 14 Watts at idle (non switchable graphics) with the screen off in Windows 7. Standby (not OFF, Standby) 0.1 Watts. Load - around 55 watts in a game.

My laptop's an Envy 15 with juniper core graphics (ATI 5770) that can run 750/1115 core/memory without breaking a sweat. CPU is a Core i5-540M.

Basically it will wipe the floor with the x360 in any processing department you could think of.

Off
Laptop: 0.0 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 1.3 Watts
Standby
Laptop: 0.1 Watts --- new x360 Slim: n/a
Idle
Laptop: 14 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 70.9 Watts
Game Load
Laptop: 60 Watts --- new x360 Slim: 99.2 Watts

(screen off on laptop all tests)

I recognize the differences in cost (also remember the x360 price is subsidized by Microsoft, I bought my laptop at a profit to HP,) the differences in technology, application, etc.

But you gotta say, that is pretty disappointing. It's a hog for not so great performance.

I did a test and can downclock my CPU and GPU to levels which about approximate the x360's performance, by setting the graphics in a few games (Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, GTA 4) to graphics that as closly match the x360 as possible and approximatively matching frame rates. I get the lappy down to about 30W LOAD on average.

What's the deal? Was MS limited by the old CPU and GPU architectures?

71W at idle?!? My damn 800W total A/V receiver uses half that at idle. The lappy like 1/5 that.
Click to expand...


because the 360 doesnt downclock anything at idle.. ibm cant use cool 'n quiet since its an AMD feature.. they cant use speedstep since its an intel feature so ibm's pretty much screwed and since it is a gaming console having an idle downclocking feature is stupid and annoying because you get that 5-10 second lag hiccup as the console clocks everything back up while a games loading.. thus a console will always use more power then a laptop..
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
because the 360 doesnt downclock anything at idle.. ibm cant use cool 'n quiet since its an AMD feature.. they cant use speedstep since its an intel feature so ibm's pretty much screwed [...]
Click to expand...

Downclocking a CPU and a GPU is not that complicated and slow. I agree with okashira, the idle performance is really bad. We already know that we can downclock mainsteam ATI GPUs pretty easy with software like AtiTool. The unknown part of the system is the CPU here. IBM is not a small CPU company, they must have their own PM (power management) system, even if it's not called Cool'n'Quiet or SpeedStep :rolleyes:
Maybe it can't down-clock or they didn't bother to do it.

sirmonkey1985 said:
[...] since it is a gaming console having an idle down-clocking feature is stupid and annoying because you get that 5-10 second lag hiccup as the console clocks everything back up while a games loading.. thus a console will always use more power then a laptop..
Click to expand...

Are you kidding ?? Updating the clock of the CPU/GPU is done in milliseconds, if not quicker than that. Even if the logic is done in software (i.e. rmclock for CPUs), the process is simple, fast and without lag. It been in CPUs and GPUs for over a decade, it is unacceptable from Microsoft not to have better PM in the Xbox.
 
It's a console for less than $500, don't expect too much as far as cutting edge power management.

Did anyone watch the reconstruction video? It's nice to have incompetence immortalized forever on the internet...

Also, I didn't see if they put the hard disk back in. It looked like something was bouncing around the slot but it didn't look like a disk drive.
 
I'll admit, the main reason I bought mine was that I was ready to buy the Wireless N adapter & the 250GB HD, since the anemic 20GB HD just wasn't cutting it anymore.

But the total retail cost for those 2 parts were around $230, I just thought, go ahead, throw in the $70, and get a quieter model, with build in wifi & the 250GB HD. All I can say is, I'm very happy I did. Now when I'm playing Red Dead Redemption, it doesn't sound like my old hand held vacuum cleaner. :)
 
essasin said:
Hopefully with these improvements RROD will be a thing of the past.
Click to expand...

Possibly. They have implemented another feature with these new units, not sure if it's been reported on in [H] anywhere yet or not. x360 auto powers down.

I personally find that message kind of funny. "Shutting down to protect the console from insufficient ventilation". Welllllllll, who teh fuck's fault is that in the first place? haha
 
If your 360 is loud, why not install the game you are playing to the HDD?
 
noise from an xbox has never bothered me. I dont play with the TV volume super loud either. I dont see why it matters.
 
450 said:
I know its much quieter than the original 360, but how does it compare to the Jasper units?
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I bought a new slim the day it was released. I also have a jasper 360. The new system is quieter. From my sofa i cant even hear it run. The disc drive is also much quieter, although it didnt matter much to me as i install all of my games on the harddrive.
 
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