Xbox 360 gets first upgrade.

dannyjo22 · 21 Apr 2006 at 20:27

So what later adopters will have quieter systems etc etc. Its always happened, the 2nd wave of playstations etc. To be honest I thought it was a given that it would happen.

It happens with everything, I brought my A8n-Sli MObo and then they change the fan for a better one, it isnt worth getting upset about.

NokkonWud · 21 Apr 2006 at 20:48

They are only making changes to the build, not making it any faster.

gord · 21 Apr 2006 at 20:51

And TBH, wont be any quieter.. the CPU fans are way overpowered by that DVD spinning!

Scarylion · 21 Apr 2006 at 21:13

Duradrum said:
Maybe some better news here. Sourced from a Spanish

- The bandwidth of the server will be increased by 5

Microsoft is preparing huge things before the PS3

what server? the fun-omatic love server? increased by 5 what? dogs? hot potatoes? scantily clad ladies?

/sponsered by booze

GuruJockStrap · 21 Apr 2006 at 21:16

If they somehow manage to considerably reduce the noise of the DVD drive then I'll probably purchase another 360 to replace my current one.

I really can't see how they can do it though. The drive needs to spin at full whack in order to keep loading times as low as possible and in order to stream content at a reasonable speed (think Oblivion as you wander around the map).

To make it quieter you could slow down the spin speed but this would greatly effect the things I mentioned above.

Of course there could be some uber DVD drive that can spin at full speed without the noise, I don't know.

Are there any DVD drives that spin at full speed quietly? My Pioneer DVD RW in my main rig and Sony DVD RW in the laptop also make a racket at full speed.

Just annoys the hell out of me when you play a demo downloaded from the marketplace. All you hear is the fans that are pretty quiet. MS made a mistake with the core pack (should be premium with the HD and nothing else) and the small size of the 20GB HD.

JUMPURS · 21 Apr 2006 at 21:38

does the dvd drive in the xbox 360 although its spinning at 'full whack' is it really going any faster than the drives from the PS2 and xbox are at the moment?

and until any of the spanish things are confirmed by another source other than a Spanish one i will take it all with a pinch of salt apart from the obvious, bigger HDD and HD-DVD add on.

as for the chip being fast, i doubt they could actually get away with it, because the programmers will be stuck in limbo land and it will no doubt result in strange crashes etc due to testing on a different chip. So it wont be any quicker.
And its not really a surprise, for example the cell isnt even really in the market, yet they are working on getting it down to a 45nm process, just evolution.

Aspect · 21 Apr 2006 at 21:45

Im tempted to sell mine and get the newer quieter revision, the noise is annoying the hell out of me :mad:

BoomAM · 22 Apr 2006 at 02:01

If the 360 gets to the point where its no louder than my GC, and to the point where it can actually be used as a media hub (its neutered at the moment), then i'd seriously consider buying one just on that merit alone.
Unfortunatelly, only the former is likely, with the latter being a pipe dream until the thing gets hacked.

Alex_L · 22 Apr 2006 at 02:17

My only complaint with the 360 is it can be a touch noisy. But with the sound turned up and fight night and oblivion blasting out it doesn't really bother me too much.

The dvd drive can sound a bit noisy on spin up, but the only way round that I can see (all my other dvd drives sound like tornados at full pelt as well) is if they start selling games directly as downloads, which personally i'd prefer, as i find discs a bit of a nightmare with people always wanting to borrow them, and then returning them scratched, downloads would solve that problem for me. And I guess playing games from the harddrive would give faster load times anyway.

cheets64 · 22 Apr 2006 at 02:28

Time to sell the 360 then and get a MK2

BoomAM · 22 Apr 2006 at 03:01

BUSH said:
...snip...

Theres not enough bandwidth for that really.
And its not exactely 'pick up & play' for games you own but cant fit on the HDD is it?
An alternative would be the option to 'copy' the entire game disk to the consoles HDD from the dashboard. Bandwidth wouldnt be an issue then.
It'd allow better load times & less noise for games you play often, and if there are other games that you want to 'pick up & play', you just stick the disk in and that'd work normally as well.
I cant see that being too complicated for MS to implement really.
It'd be more of a question of the same copy of the game being used on multiple consoles.
I suppose a way around that is to only have that 'feature' available to people with net connections. That'll limit the number of 'HDD Copys' per game title to 1 via a net based security Db.

Alex_L · 22 Apr 2006 at 03:32

BoomAM said:
snip...

for sure its not feasible at the moment in the uk, but its personally what i'd prefer. I'd much rather have say a 250gig harddrive, and download games to it, than own hard copies. With the advent of 24meg dsl I can see it becoming feasible to download 5-10 gigs overnight, which is no longer than mail ordering.

Realistically, i can't see it happening. I think its more likely we'll see movie download services testing the water for large file distribution over the internet, and if thats sucessful then possibly online game distribution. I'd of thought long term it would also be more profitable for microsoft and developers as you cut out the middleman and retail network, granted at the price of the infrastrucutre and bandwidth for such a service.

blueshift · 22 Apr 2006 at 06:30

i really dont know what all the noise fuss is about??, can you really hear it when your playing a game?? or do you sit there with your ear pressed up against just to have a good ,moan, yeah it makes a little noise, but i cant say i even notice it myself

dirtydog · 22 Apr 2006 at 07:28

BUSH said:
The dvd drive can sound a bit noisy on spin up, but the only way round that I can see (all my other dvd drives sound like tornados at full pelt as well)

The DVD drives in the Xbox and PS2 are virtually silent.

lordrobs · 22 Apr 2006 at 08:11

blueshift said:
i really dont know what all the noise fuss is about??, can you really hear it when your playing a game?? or do you sit there with your ear pressed up against just to have a good ,moan, yeah it makes a little noise, but i cant say i even notice it myself

It seems to be very dependant on how / where the console is placed. I found the noise a bit intrusive when I had my console up high on a shelf, now its positioned lower on a TV stand its much quieter.

dannyjo22 · 22 Apr 2006 at 10:36

cheets64 said:
Time to sell the 360 then and get a MK2

What on earth for. In another 6 months when revision 3 comes out will you sell again?

Ive yet to hear a DVD drive for computer equipment that doesnt make that noise at max chat. I know mine in my PC do when reading a disc at full speed.

Yes the Xbox and Ps2 ones are a bit quieter, but do they need to spin as quickly? If they did spin as quickly they wouldnt have the power to read the disc and data at that speed.

Perhaps soon we will do a 360 (no pun intended) with solid state drives coming to the 30 gig plus that games will go back to a cartridge format like on the mega drive etc???

Malenko · 22 Apr 2006 at 10:40

dannyjo22 said:
Perhaps soon we will do a 360 (no pun intended) with solid state drives coming to the 30 gig plus that games will go back to a cartridge format like on the mega drive etc???

Yeah, and with those massive prices we used to pay for cartridge based games too. Bring back cassettes I say

BoomAM · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:10

BUSH said:
for sure its not feasible at the moment in the uk, but its personally what i'd prefer. I'd much rather have say a 250gig harddrive, and download games to it, than own hard copies. With the advent of 24meg dsl I can see it becoming feasible to download 5-10 gigs overnight, which is no longer than mail ordering.

Your completely missing my point there.

I said that its not feasible to DL the games over the net. But it'd be good to DL an update for the 360 that'd allow the game disks to be ripped to the consoles HDD. And that for a security options that that'd ability would be limited to people with net connections.

VIRII · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:20

turtle3 said:
so some people may have better performing 360' than others?? seems a bit unfair really??

If you bought a MkIV Golf would you think it a bit unfair that 9 months later someone bought a MkV Golf?

VIRII · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:22

BoomAM said:
I suppose a way around that is to only have that 'feature' available to people with net connections. That'll limit the number of 'HDD Copys' per game title to 1 via a net based security Db.

That might seriously upset the second hand market for 360 games.