So I bought another 360

[darkswordsman17]

Well, I decided to get another 360 finally, this my third one. I sold my previous two, one a launch system, and the other bought I forget when in 2006. Neither one gave me any problems or ever overheated or anything. They were a bit noisy, the second one I remember being particularly so when playing Gears of War (the disc drive would go into turbo mode apparently).

Went to Best Buy since neither Wal-Mart or Target had the Premiums with HDMI. Picked up Guitar Hero II as well. I had planned on waiting for confirmation of the revised ones, but I'm liking what I see from Halo 3 and there's plenty of other games to play as well. I even thought about waiting for the Halo 3 one that comes out today, but I'm not liking the color and its just not worth it for me even if it has the 65nm CPU.

Well, when I opened it up, there's several things that I notice. First of all, it feels like its made of cheaper plastic than the first one I had. I recall both the controllers and the system itself had a glossy gunmetal grey color on them, whereas the newer ones have a much uglier lighter matte grey. Oh, and the hard drive doesn't have the chrome accent anymore. None of that a big deal as you don't notice it much anyway. I also see that the power cord seems cheaper as well. Its definitely lighter and also uses a two prong plug instead of the first one's 3 prong. Again, not a big deal, but worth noting. I even notice that the battery part of the controller seems cheaper made. I haven't tried anything other than GH, so I don't know for sure if the disc drive is much quieter yet (I couldn't hear it at all with GH for what its worth). I don't notice it being excessively noisy or putting out a lot of heat, but again, I'll have to watch some movies (the disc drive whine was noticeable on movies a lot too), and try more intensive games and see how it does. Also, I want to get an HDMI cable and do a bit of testing to see if there's much difference there.

I get it all set up and download some demos of games I'm interested in. I notice that the overall interface has evolved nicely over time. I think they're cutting corners on the hardware a bit, but the part that you really interact with has gotten better. Its still easy to set everything up.

I plan on giving some updated impressions (after checking out Live Marketplace more, probably mess with streaming, and of course playing some newer games). Nothing groundbreaking, but I thought some people might be interested.

 

[EvilComputer92]

Interesting if some of the parts of gotten made with cheaper plastic. Did you get an elite? The greyish color doesn't sound like its a standard system.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Oh, sorry, just noticed that I didn't really specify. The grey part I'm talking about is the grill color and bottom accent on the controllers. I had noticed this with my second system (I still had one of the original controllers at the time), although I think the second one still had the glossy stuff on the system itself. I would guess its just typical cost cutting measures. Even the white feels like cheaper plastic (seems to be thinner) on the new one. The controllers feel less hefty too.

At Xbox-scene someone already had a Halo edition one and took pictures. The green looked quite a bit worse than the pictures you see. Just looking at it, it seemed like cheaper plastic as well. The person also mentioned something about the texture of the plastic. They opened it but didn't take the heatsinks off so they couldn't say if it had the 65nm CPU.

 

[PianoMan]

I'm gunning to replace my 360 for an HDMI connection. I had my eyes set on the Halo 3 edition - okay I'm not too much a fan boy, but get swept up in the frenzy of it all.

But I think I'm going to wait until the 65nm systems come out, now.

PM

 

[LordGestle]

Noticed the same differences but thought I might have been mistaken. My unit was purchased in Dec 06 and my brother in law just picked up a Pro yesterday with HDMI yesterday.
The plastic, I don't know if thinner, but is more of a harder plastic. Example I think it would scratch less than the softer one that I have, but probably chips/cracks easily.
The gray, side vents, are also off color from the one that I have. Not realy worse, just different shade.
The largest difference that I noticed was the system noise. His seemed alot quieter at idle and when loading a game via DVD.
Even if they are cost reductions measures, the difference in sound was a nice improvement.
Could just be my fans are older than his, but the DVD rom noise was noticably quiter.
Areas that I did notice where a reduction was made, that was already pointed out, was the the Network Cable (Shorter), and the PSU Cable (shorter as well).

 

[randay]

bill gates needs a new pair of shoes.... diamond studded rocket shoes!

 

[Mxylplyx]

Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

 

[PricklyPete]

I wouldn't replace a perfectly working 360 either. I will probably buy a second sometime down the road to have a second system (one for upstairs...one for downstairs). But replacing a perfectly good one just doesn't make sense.

If there were new features I wanted (HDMI, larger hd, etc), that would be different.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I want to replace mine, but it's got issues. Sometimes I wish it would just RROD so I could get a new one for free.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

It sounds like he bought one, sold it, waited a while, bought another, sold it, waited a while, then bought this one. But I agree, seems odd to me. You're going to lose money each time you sell it (unless he sold the first one immediately after launch).

 

[Aikouka]

I wouldn't want to replace one for the limits placed on XBLA games. If my Internet went out and I was bored, I couldn't play any of them because I'm not on the original console that they were purchased on and I'm not logged into the XBL account that purchased them.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I wasn't replacing anything. I went from not having a 360 to having one again. I sold my first one a few months after launch since it was going to be quite a while before any games I was interested in came out. I bought the second one pretty much just to play Gears of War and a couple of other games and then sold it a few months later again because there were not going to be any games I really wanted coming out for a while, and I knew a price drop and also possibly a revision was going to happen sometime probably before I planned on getting another one. I had better things to spend the $300+ on than a system that wasn't being used. I'll probably do the same thing with this one in a few months. I'll have to eat some money on this one (which I didn't have to on either of my other ones) since I didn't get a good deal on it or anything, but I might end up keeping it too. I am interested in PGR4 and Guitar Hero III, but beyond that, the only thing I'd really be interested in is Burnout 5 and I think that has gotten pushed into 2008 now.

Anyways, conflicts of interest aside, I don't know if you've owned a 360, but even turning the volume up won't be able to drown out the noise of the system when playing an intensive game like Gears of War. The disc drive is constantly spinning at full tilt (on the one I had it was louder than the infamous ATi X1900 fans). Plus, just cranking the volume isn't exactly a feasible option all the time, and there's no reason I should be forced to do that. If Microsoft would allow you to "install" games to the drive, then there would be more of a reason to buy the larger hard drive and it would make the gaming experience better. Oh well.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I want to replace mine to get one with HDMI and new 65nm processor once it comes out. I'll just ebay my older version and take the hit in price difference. Faster load times and much improved HD quality with the HDMI are well worth it to me for a home entertainment system. Remember that many of us who own a 360 use it for more than playing games.

 

[Thraxen]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Anyways, conflicts of interest aside, I don't know if you've owned a 360, but even turning the volume up won't be able to drown out the noise of the system when playing an intensive game like Gears of War. The disc drive is constantly spinning at full tilt (on the one I had it was louder than the infamous ATi X1900 fans). Plus, just cranking the volume isn't exactly a feasible option all the time, and there's no reason I should be forced to do that. If Microsoft would allow you to "install" games to the drive, then there would be more of a reason to buy the larger hard drive and it would make the gaming experience better. Oh well.

I'm with you. We must have gotten the same DVD drives in our 360's. My launch 360 still works fine, but the damn thing is too loud. It's obscenely loud when an actual 360 game is launched, but it's still fairly loud when the disc drive isn't spinning at all (while at the dash or playing an XBLA game). And, sure, when I have the audio cranked and I'm in the middle of a game I don't notice it, but when it's late at night and the wife is trying to sleep and I have the audio down the 360's noise is noticeable to the point of distraction.

And, you know, even with the audio cranked, you can still hear the 360 if you listen for it.. it's just that loud. Also, it's not like there's noise 100% of the time while playing a game. Any game still has quiet or less noisy periods... and some have a lot of quiet periods depending upon the game.

So, yes, I actually do plan to replace my fully working 360 when the new 65nm systems hit shelves.

 

[Mxylplyx]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I want to replace mine to get one with HDMI and new 65nm processor once it comes out. I'll just ebay my older version and take the hit in price difference. Faster load times and much improved HD quality with the HDMI are well worth it to me for a home entertainment system. Remember that many of us who own a 360 use it for more than playing games.

I'm very skeptical of that. Have there been any side by side comparisions?

 

[RandomFool]

I couldn't ever imagine buying a console 3 times unless there were some major revision. It's interesting to get some perspective on how they've changed things since launch though.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I want to replace mine to get one with HDMI and new 65nm processor once it comes out. I'll just ebay my older version and take the hit in price difference. Faster load times and much improved HD quality with the HDMI are well worth it to me for a home entertainment system. Remember that many of us who own a 360 use it for more than playing games.

I'm very skeptical of that. Have there been any side by side comparisions?

I'm sure they can be found. You will see the biggest difference when comparing HD-DVDs being played on the 360 with it's HD-DVD player. However, the HDMI cable will show improvements all around. My experience is limited to seeing the differences between a friend of mines older 360 and his new one on the same HDTV.

 

[CKDragon]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx
Damn, I must not make enough money, because it would never cross my mind to replace a working 360 system with another. Gameplay would be exactly the same...so whats the point? If the DVD drive is too loud, dont play games on mute.

I want to replace mine to get one with HDMI and new 65nm processor once it comes out. I'll just ebay my older version and take the hit in price difference. Faster load times and much improved HD quality with the HDMI are well worth it to me for a home entertainment system. Remember that many of us who own a 360 use it for more than playing games.

I'm very skeptical of that. Have there been any side by side comparisions?

I'm sure they can be found. You will see the biggest difference when comparing HD-DVDs being played on the 360 with it's HD-DVD player. However, the HDMI cable will show improvements all around. My experience is limited to seeing the differences between a friend of mines older 360 and his new one on the same HDTV.

Link to Gizmodo comparison.

This is the first article Google happened upon. It gives a favorable review to the HDMI-enable consoles. That said, I've witnessed enough Component vs. VGA vs. HDMI wars in avsforum to know that there can't be that much of a difference. Also, I believe that since this article came out that MS's dashboard now allows the upscaling of regular DVDs over component, don't they?

My first (and current) Xbox 360 is my Elite model that I got on launch day back in April. It's been hooked up via HDMI since day 1 so I don't have any experience with the 360's component connection.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: CKDragon
Link to Gizmodo comparison.

This is the first article Google happened upon. It gives a favorable review to the HDMI-enable consoles. That said, I've witnessed enough Component vs. VGA vs. HDMI wars in avsforum to know that there can't be that much of a difference. Also, I believe that since this article came out that MS's dashboard now allows the upscaling of regular DVDs over component, don't they?

My first (and current) Xbox 360 is my Elite model that I got on launch day back in April. It's been hooked up via HDMI since day 1 so I don't have any experience with the 360's component connection.

The amount of difference it makes depends on who you ask I guess. It's more important to some than others. Anyways, I also have a hunch that VGA will be phased out long before HDMI is phased out. That's another reason I want to get the new version.

 

[Xed]

Any update on when the falcon revisions will be available?