Can Jasper Cure The Red Ring Of Death?
Personally, I've yet to experience the dreaded Read Ring of Death myself, because my Xbox 360 simply decided one day to not output anything to my TV. It couldn't be bothered to turn the ring from green to red. The lack of video or audio signal was a dead giveaway it still needed a repair, though! I know others here in the castle have been struck down, as have many of our readers. But it would appear that a potential fix is on the way.
Apparently a new motherboard code-named "Jasper" is equipped with 65 nm CPU and GPU units, which means nothing to me because I don't speak tech, but I'm told will deliver lower operating temperatures and reduced power consumption. The overheating is believed to be what causes the 360's to Red Ring.
"The graphics chip will likely consume less power than previous versions, allowing it to fit snugly into its motherboard socket," said renowned industry commentator Dean Takahashi. "That should lead to fewer system failures due to the graphics chips coming loose."
We'll see if this helps any. The power brick is being downgraded from 203 watts to 150 watts accordingly, but the more interesting tidbit of information I found in this piece was that the new Xbox 360 models will come with 256 MB of internal memory standard, which means the basic Arcade pack won't need a memory card. Well, at least not right away.
New Jasper Boards To Eliminate Red Ring Of Death? [The Tech Herald]
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 1 December 2008
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: jasper, microsoft, red ring of death, xbox 360
I'll guess no, personally. They've still got pcb quality issues, they've gone back to memory chips on the underside of the board, and they've still got the graphics chip housed under the drive.
I'm sure that, barring issues with the 65nm chip itself, it could reduce them - and we can guesstimate that the smaller chip is less likely to pop out of its socket due to warping - but there's no way to really say what the behaviour will be like without basically seeing it in its production form, en-masse.
I suspect that they'll start trickling them into the pipeline, a little at a time, and watch the failure rates; if the failure rates are good enough for them (not to say that means they need to be good - it's cheaper to manufacture, so it only has to be equal to or a little worse than the current gen to be cost effective) then they'll start adding them faster and phase out the falcons, I'd expect.
If it turns out to be *genuinely* quieter, I might consider a repurchase, just for Halo Recon, Fable, and Gears 2. Maybe. I'm still pretty effed off with my last bout of ownership of a 360, though, and it's going to take a *miracle* to make me do so - I don't think they're willing to spend that kind of engineering effort, and I don't expect they have.
Until then, I've got a happy and quiet PS3 that's never had a hardware problem in its life, and I'm going to stick to it.
"They've still got pcb quality issues, "
No they don't. None of my insiders at Microsoft say that they have PCB issues anymore.
The Jasper mobo is not quieter but it runs MUCH cooler.
Also I award you 10 points for the awesome Simpsons reference.
Red ring of death? That's a paddlin'.
Their "new" mobo is 65nm? WTF?
2005 called, it wants its motherboard back.