Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 18, 2010 1:59 AM ESTFinal Words
Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are all trying to change the rules of the game for the next generation of consoles. Five years ago we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Xbox 360 and today we are still left without a replacement. Microsoft and Sony want to push the current cycle of consoles through 2012 in order to recover investment dollars. Thankfully despite the age of these consoles, the quality of titles only seems to be improving.
The Xbox 360 slim is often referred to as what the first 360 should have been. It is smaller, quieter and hopefully much more reliable than what Microsoft first shipped five years ago. If it is indeed using 40nm components from TSMC I wouldn't expect a quick ramp. It may be that the slim remains at the $299 price point for a while until Microsoft can get enough silicon back to bring it to lower price points. Update: It looks like the CGPU is made at Chartered, now Global Foundries at 45nm. We may see a quicker ramp than I first assumed as a result.
Coupled with Kinect and some exciting titles due out later this year and next (not to mention the 360's media streaming capabilities), there should be enough life in the 360 to make an investment in the new box today worthwhile.
That being said, I really do hope that we see just as many eager game developers take advantage of the tremendous increase in CPU and GPU horsepower we've been given over the past five years. When the 360's CPU was first announced no desktop CPU could manage 6 threads, today we can have twice that paired with over 12 times the amount of cache on the 360's CPU. Today's GPUs are similarly impressive and are going to be even more affordable this year, and faster next.
Just as the high end grows more powerful, so will mobile gaming devices. We are not that far away from having the power of an Xbox 360 in a smartphone. An in-order triple core CPU should be doable in an SoC within 4 years, and the GPU within a similar amount of time. And there are companies working on both. Eventually the 360's library may be the "arcade classic" titles you'll be playing on your smartphone.
Sweet.
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kratos4u - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
xbox 360 console sells high = pirated copiesif MS take measures to stops piracy 100% = sales down
torrent = xbox 360 sales.
any 1 agree
sorry xbox 360 fanboys
evilowner - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link
ur logic is flawed big time any type of data is torrent..... before u target 1 thing plz do alittle research PS3 GAMEES ? also ? 0_o moives? music? programs etc do i need to keeping typing dump little kid.... torrents is to lower prices so ur not paying 150 for ur low quality data.... torrents keep prices in check... period.viocosi - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
In the new xbox 360 slim is possible to use the iXtreme firmware?fiftey - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
As the article shows, there are minor improvements in power consumption and noise levels with the larger single fan, but I don't care about noise levels. The issue I have is does this fan provide sufficient cooling? With lots of people complaining on amazon.com that their brand new Xbox 360 S is already red-lighting and breaking down, I wonder whether microsoft have messed up again by focusing too hard on lowering noise levels by using a larger fan and lowering fan speeds and not providing sufficient cooling for the singular, larger heatsink.I'd like to see some comparison data on the operating temperatures of the valhalla and jasper and if the new xbox is indeed still running hot, a step by step tutorial of how users can simply mod their new 360s so that the fan is always at max speed
tipoo - Thursday, July 14, 2011 - link
AFAIK the failure rates of the new slims are below 1% (don't remember the source) vs above 30 for the original. All electronics have a certain failure rate, below 1% is good enough for me.draco2210 - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link
anyone heard any news or updates about flashing the new DG-16D4S drives yet?pfeifer220 - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
I lost the connector and power brick to my new 360 slim, does anybody know where or how I can purchase just these 2 items alone?butanebob - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
"Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly happy about purchasing a sixth Xbox 360, but here it is:"People like you are the reason the RROD was even an issue. No wonder microsoft didn't bother sorting it out 5 years ago....
walkerfsu18 - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
i have the 360 slim but on it i hate how its the same as ps3,there are these white spots i just cant get off,i tried everything,any ideas?evilowner - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link
1st off why argue over a shitie disk? dvd n blue-ray both fucking suck peroid. MY HARD DRIVE..... yea i said it..... the hard drive loads and stores way more than both of those n are both garbage. my hard drive loads a million times fast than both of them : P so any type of dvd isnt the future its ur hard drive......... 1 it loads a million times faster. 2 . it holds way more... uhhh terabyte hard drives.... come on.... why would i want a dvd or a blue ray disk?? yup i wouldnt..... they shouldnt even make disks anymore..... when u can dl the game to the hard drive n be done with it n never ever have to buy the game again..... or movie or even music..... enought is said, if u dont get it...sigh.... than u will never know how close to the future u truely are, n should go back into ur cave. ty. peace !