Xbox 360 Elite gutted

  • By thorsen-ink, GameSpot
  • Posted Apr 21, 2007 11:03 am AEST

Though it won't officially be on store shelves for another nine days, the Xbox 360 Elite has already apparently been purchased, spirited away, and gutted. Minnesotan tech blog Llama.com is posting pictures of of what it claims is a disassembled Elite. And, other than the HDMI output and...

Though it won't officially be on store shelves for another nine days, the Xbox 360 Elite has already apparently been purchased, spirited away, and gutted. Minnesotan tech blog Llama.com is posting pictures of of what it claims is a disassembled Elite. And, other than the HDMI output and 120GB hard drive, its silicon entrails apparently aren't much different from those of a standard Xbox 360.

According to Llama.com, the Elite it disassembled has the same noisy Hitachi DVD drive as many older 360s--not the quieter BenQ drives found in several newer batches of the console. The site was also unable to tell if the console's CPU was made using the larger 90nm processor or the more energy-efficient 65nm processor, which is supposed to be introduced later this year.

774 Comments

  • needforravish

    Posted Dec 24, 2008 6:11 pm PT

    coz like its better but ps3 has d blu ray

  • needforravish

    Posted Dec 24, 2008 6:10 pm PT

    it cant beat ps3 ne ways

  • antoniobch

    Posted Sep 15, 2008 10:15 pm PT

    Xbox 360 elite rules and uhhhh DOWN WITH MICROSOFT HATERS even tho i was a sony boy

  • antoniobch

    Posted Sep 15, 2008 10:15 pm PT

    Xbox 360 elite rules and uhhhh DOWN WITH MICROSOFT HATERS even tho i was a sony boy

  • darkstar6392

    Posted May 14, 2008 2:00 pm PT

    sorry bout this but what is a red ring of doom?

  • erskinesix

    Posted Oct 8, 2007 3:16 am PT

    Ever since my 360 flashed the "Ring of Death" at me earlier this year I had gone right off microsoft's big noisy brut of a thing. Being a dedicated gamer though, I'll wait until the energy-efficient 65nm processor is put into 360s before I get another one!

  • PikminmegMaster

    Posted Sep 2, 2007 2:28 pm PT

    I have the Wii and the power brick is quite big but not as big as the Xbox 360's and the 360 is three times the size of the Wii
    GO NINTENDO

  • BalefulSpartan

    Posted Jul 17, 2007 9:48 am PT

    Just got my Elite a week ago and I LOVE IT!!! great value best console on the market. The Black looks SWEET, I haven't had any problems and I give it a perfect ((( 10 )))

  • Kid8Ace

    Posted Jun 18, 2007 8:39 pm PT

    im getting 1

  • Beba_FH

    Posted Jun 14, 2007 10:34 am PT

    C'mon people you should be a shame of yourselves you should go out and get the Xbox 360 Elite... its better that the normal one and espicially for the increase of hard drive memory

  • robbie80

    Posted Jun 10, 2007 5:05 am PT

    I have to say the 360 is the worst console ever made, game are good but the console oh my god it so cheaply made there more expensive part in the ps3 than the 360 and that power brick wtf it huge. I own all three console and the ps3 and wii are the best the xbox360 has bing notting but trouble for me gone throw 2 xbox 360 console and the third f#ck my console hard drive and mess up my connection to xbox live,and because of it i have to get new broadband supplyer and sell my mess up xbox so i can get a new one thank microsoft well done another great customer service that has people that can bearly speak english.

  • Mrkilljoy11

    Posted Jun 5, 2007 7:17 am PT

    put*

  • Mrkilljoy11

    Posted Jun 5, 2007 7:16 am PT

    well i have both the "ps3" and also "xbox 360" and i think both are equally good. the only down side atm is the ps3 dose not have enough games but for the games they do have they are quite good. and if u dont like the price of the new hd for the 360 but a laptop hd and wack it in the 360... its not hard to do

  • ISmokeThatPurp

    Posted May 22, 2007 8:56 pm PT

    hell yeah its sweet

  • Bronson2k3

    Posted May 18, 2007 2:16 pm PT

    Crapstation 3 is NOT a super computer to solve the worlds problems LOL If there isnt allready there will be a better more powerfull processor in less then a year in computers..It's always a better deal when its NOT $600+TAX...FYI Most of us are pooor and the money tree dont grow in my backyard

  • lillitu

    Posted May 10, 2007 1:02 am PT

    The HDMI is a little clearer than most other sources and a 120 gig drive is the only difference. But they are ment to be releasing another version with the promised goods, upscale dvd to 1920 x 1080, 65nm processor, quieter cooling, HDMI, 120G drive and newest firmware/dash, around the end of the year, cant say if thats here or US date but id rather wait for it. For PS3 I wouldnt touch it for online gaming if my life depended on it.

  • rety5

    Posted May 2, 2007 3:51 am PT

    Thats got to be untrue. I mean who would spend hundreds of pounds/dollars on a console just to dissasemble it photograph it and yell to the world "This is my proof that I own an xbox 360 elite!" I cant wait to see their faces when they attempt to put it back together and it wont work!

  • Symphonycometh

    Posted May 1, 2007 10:17 pm PT

    "It's called...the Ps3"

    LOL

  • Evan4prez

    Posted May 1, 2007 2:18 pm PT

    **I felt the need to post something relevant to the topic.**

    My first impressions from the ELITE is that it is indeed considerably quieter than my launch console. My PC fan is louder than the ELITE and this one must have the Ben-Q drive because the DVDROM is also much quieter. Power consumption appears to be the same though, so I am assuming these still have the 90 NM chips. I noticed that the Llama.com one had a Hitachi drive, but mine definitely does not. They must be putting in different drives based on what plant is making them or something like that. The black is beautiful, now I just wish I could get a black skin for my HDDVD drive.

    So far I am enjoying the ELITE and I am happy with the HDMI output. I can now have sound easily run to the TV and to my surround sound with no loss which is a nice change. Before I had to run the sound directly to the surround to get no loss, meaning I always had to play in surround. Now with the HDMI I can play with the sound in the TV if I want, or use the surround which is connected through the Audio cables.

    With trade-ins it was cheaper than buying the hard drive. Those considering buying one, move fast to enjoy the gamestop deals!

  • illwill420

    Posted May 1, 2007 12:42 pm PT

    thats good to here glad i got a ps3

  • schlosser_rider

    Posted May 1, 2007 11:20 am PT

    OMG you people are retarded. Quit spending so much time b!tchin about who's console is better, and just play the one you have.

    If you live in the U.S. think about M$ this way; even though M$ takes alot of our money, think of how many people they employ. If they went out of business, there would be hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs. And with no fight to step up above the competitor, your video games would completely suck. So suck it up and play your games!

  • lobo12

    Posted Apr 30, 2007 5:20 pm PT

    Is funny how a bunch of PS3's fans comment on the Xbox 360 news trying to make us feel bad and them better for having a more expensive console.
    If you have a PS3 that's ok enjoy it and if you have a 360 enjoy it too don't tell someone not to get a console just because you don't like it because your not the one paying for it so just keep the hater comments to your self.

  • Utgardaloki

    Posted Apr 30, 2007 12:00 pm PT

    @juxax “consoles are for children, so I dunno why they make em so exspensive. … well anyway, the 360 isn't even next gen, it's old. PS3 destroys it, and pc's destroys all, so. I feel sorry for people wasting their money on consoles right now..”

    I love playing on PCs since there are game types that fit the PC very well but aren’t very well suited for the console interface in my mind. I think there are a lot of good shooters on the PC as well as on consoles but the as long as I can’t use a mouse or something like it on the consoles I’ll take the PC version over the other. And I have never seen a good MMO on consoles. But PCs are a whole different market than consoles. PCs are generally graphically superior to consoles as long as you are willing to pay for it. But except for possibly the Intel quad cores there is still no PC CPU that can beat the power of the Xbox 360’s Xenon CPU in many more advanced situations. And nothing even touches the PS3 CPU as it is. Even though PC CPUs are by far the most powerful CPUs from a general processing point of view they aren’t very efficient at handling things like physics and AI. They lack or have to little of the narrow and special types of processing that the console CPUs are crammed with. So in order to have a lot happening a PC normally needs some type of physics accelerator like AGEIA or a very powerful graphics card or even a spare graphics card to achieve the same or surpass the new consoles in this department. Both the 360’s and PS3’s CPUs are in-order-processors unlike the PC’s more advanced out-of-order architecture which makes the console CPUs bad at certain things. In stead they have opted for very powerful streaming processors that achieve very high Flops rates. And just like the very high streaming Flops in graphics cards this can be used for very advanced physics, tracking lots of things on screen and more. The graphics processors have the highest Flops but are also the narrowest in how they can be applied. The console CPUs have less but are considerably wider in how they can be applied. PC CPUs are by far the widest but normally have too little power to truly achieve something spectacular within a game unless you are willing to play with very low frame rates. So games like that are very much avoided on PCs. And PCs also have a huge problem with optimisation compared to consoles where the power can be almost totally realised, at least after a few years. Graphics aside it took PCs several years to really surpass what was being done on the last generation of consoles processor wise. And PC games are not made to truly take advantage of the most powerful PC CPUs since if they were there would only be a few thousand possible consumers who could run the game. So from a game play point of view games are geared to run well on the average powered ones (much less powerful than both 360 and PS3) which kind of eliminates the possibility of very advanced physics and so on. So those with the most powerful machines only get the added bonus of being able to crank up the graphics while maintaining good frame rates. The game play how ever stays on the level achievable on the much less powerful ones. It has to otherwise no market. So technically PCs have the nicest graphics and consoles the highest main processor power. Right now at least.

  • ball_of_air

    Posted Apr 30, 2007 10:20 am PT

    The elite is MS version of the PS3, but Sony already have a version of the PS3, it's called... the PS3.

  • cherrytwister

    Posted Apr 30, 2007 10:05 am PT

    When something is "ELITE" it comes with a higher price tag than its compeditors, wouldn't that make the PS3 the true "ELITE" console. Why 120 gb hard drive ( Because its double the PS3? ), Well if thats the case, I can do better than that, how about a 200 gb hard drive for my PS3 and I'm not locked into only buying the "Microsoft" brand. HDMI the PS3 has it, in TRUE NATIVE 1080P. Oh and did I mention its already BLACK!

  • smoothn00dle

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 11:20 pm PT

    Too little too late *v*

  • Hinduce

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 8:28 pm PT

    Its a good thing i got one. I have two HDMI ports in the back of my TV now i know one goes to something "wink wink" and the other will be the 360. Plus if you think about it all that comes with the Elite is a damm good bargin....Thankx MS!!!!!

  • juxax

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 8:12 pm PT

    consoles are for children, so I dunno why they make em so exspensive. firstly, I heard that Microsoft own all consoles, even if you buy them, some small print somewhere or something? and that the fan snags main power from the machine and can cause problems? well anyway, the 360 isn't even next gen, it's old. PS3 destroys it, and pc's destroys all, so. I feel sorry for people wasting their money on consoles right now..

  • hi_im_derek

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 6:06 pm PT

    Wow, what's up with all the deleted comments. lol Silly, silly cows.

  • RoC1909

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 1:21 pm PT

    Jeez, did this 'person' who gutted the system honestly think that they would find anything significantly different than what Microsoft has stated. A 120Gig HD and a HDMI connector. What could be different. BORING!!

  • ashkon91

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 11:11 am PT

    This Is Bad I have to w8 longer it was so close but to far now i cant wait :'(

  • Utgardaloki

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 10:05 am PT

    @ball_of_air So my posts are too long for ya? Or not saying the things you would like? What ever... This thread was about the Elite and that’s what I’ve been talking about. Try it yourself and keep your attitude where it belongs. Back to topic.

  • Skiggy80

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 8:35 am PT

    No this isnt interesting! This edition of the 360 was not supposed to include a quiter processor and Ben-q drive. All you Sony heads are in here feasting over nothing. This wasn't a promise to be quieter system from Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't post lies like Sony so dont come in here trying to provoke nothing. I dont even know why this was published on this site. The 90ns processor was not coming out on this system.

  • ball_of_air

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 8:34 am PT

    Microsoft is part of the HD-DVD camp. They are one of this format’s greatest supporters. But Microsoft has two valid reasons for not directly adding the HD-DVD drive to the 360 hardware:
    1 They didn’t include it in the first place which means you can never develop games using that format since it would leave the earlier adopters out in the cold.
    2 Putting an HD-DVD drive directly in the 360 could be confusing to many customers since it implies that games will be developed using the higher capacity format. In other words it implies you are paying for something that in the end you will not be able to utilise and a lot of consumers would end up feeling cheated by Microsoft. So the solution is of course to sell the “videogame” at a lower price and a stand alone HD-DVD player clearly marketed as a device intended for movies.
    So I don’t demand they put that thing directly in there. What I do demand how ever is that they stay true to the HD-DVD format since not only do they imply you are getting the full experience of the HD-DVD movie format with this add on, they sure as hell are letting you pay for that “full-blown HD-DVD experience” as well. But instead you are now paying the full price for a crippled HD-DVD system.
    As a supporter of this format it really seems odd that Microsoft haven’t gone the full mile in creating a stellar representative for it seeing as they now had the chance to fully counter not only the PS3 brand but also the Blu-ray one. The power of the 360 makes it a perfect candidate to compete in this area since from a number crunching point of view it handles all things HD-DVD with ease. But seeing as the build of this new sku is such a poor counter to the competing PS3’s Blu-ray offering it really makes one suspect Microsoft is giving up the HD movie format war all together. It’s as if they’re saying “we have to have it because consumers demand it but we won’t give it much of an effort”. They have literally given Sony and PS3’s blu-ray capacity as well as the Blu-ray brand the nod with this gesture.

    “The processor may be more powerful in spec on the PS3, but it's so friggin hard to develop for it might as well be a Pentium D, and the 360 graphics card and RAM are slightly superior as well, so you might say the 360 has higher specs.”

    I was so tired last night I forgot to comment on this quote RollMaster. But no you can’t say the Xbox 360 has higher specs. The 360 has a very nice graphical architecture that can achieve very good graphical results even though the 360 has very little system bandwidth seeing as it is shared between the CPU and GPU. The high bandwidth 10MB EDRAM on the GPU is what saves it from an otherwise inevitable and crippling bottle neck. The good thing about this EDRAM is that it allows the 360 to perform some heavy graphical tasks for free as well as saving the main RAM and it’s 22,4GB/sec bandwidth from having to carry the load of a AA setup. AA is thus just about free on the 360. The bad thing is that the EDRAM only contains 10MB. So the frame buffer still has to occupy a part of the main RAM as well as some of its bandwidth (the PS3 doesn’t need to do this). The other bad thing is that the EDRAM can’t hold many textures so those have to be streamed over this low system bandwidth (another thing the PS3 generally doesn’t have to do nearly as much). What this means is that the heavier texture load in a game the less bandwidth left for the CPU. So as graphics go up the CPU might start to take a hit. This scenario becomes the worst with 1080p graphics on the 360 since both the frame buffer as well as the texture streams will be stealing even more bandwidth from the CPU than at lower resolutions. On PS3 you still have to place the frame buffer and AA setup in memory as well as fetching textures from it. But on the PS3 the main RAM as well as it’s bandwidth doesn’t have to be hit by this since PS3 has a divided memory architecture. In other words a dedicated video RAM and bandwidth to take care of this. And this is the reason why the PS3 has split it’s 512MB RAM into two separate parts. Otherwise the Cell wouldn’t be able to work fast enough. This now means that the Cell’s bandwidth to RAM remains unaffected and can be sustained regardless of how heavy the graphics are (not completely true but the hit can be kept pretty low compared to the 360). On the 360 the available CPU bandwidth is not only punished by the graphics but the punishment scales with more advanced graphics. And what do you need in order to calculate very advanced physics, artificial intelligence and broad interactivity over all? Two things:
    1 You need a very powerful processor preferably with dedicated hardware… PS3 check/360 so so.
    2 You need a very fast dedicated bandwidth that can be sustained at all times… PS3 check/360 not very likely (at any rate much less than on PS3).
    The Cell processor can fetch information for the above mentioned purposes much faster than any other architecture meant for the home market and then process it at pretty enormous speeds.
    The attractive power of the PS3 comes in the form of this CPU which can be kept busy at all times with very heavy duty tasks. It’s not about how advanced the graphics can be. Its about how much can be taken care of at the same time. And the reason the PS3 can be considerably more powerful than the 360 in this regard is in part due to this main processor and partly due to the considerably more powerful memory architecture used by the CPU. The 360 doesn’t have a very powerful memory architecture. In fact it falls short to the CPU bandwidth management of even a quite powerful PC once the 360 needs to throw around very heavy graphics. But not even the most powerful PC that money can buy today can compare to the CPU and it’s memory setup on the PS3 performance wise. Not by a long shot.
    A GPU alone can only create and sustain a still image. If you want the image to change ever so slightly during the next frame you need a CPU to calculate the changes and report them to the GPU. The most powerful PC GPU in the world can create a very high resolution image with beautiful graphics in the shortest time. But if you want the parts described within that image, be it graphically magnificent or just mediocre, to change in 200 000 ways during the next frame you might have to wait several seconds before the frame actually pops up. The GPU doesn’t care about those changes. It just “paints” the new frame just as fast as the one prior to it once it actually gets the frame information. But ask that CPU how easy it was tracking, comparing and recalculating all the variables needed to conclude the outcome of each little change. The task of calculating and reporting it to the GPU can cost many gigabytes/sec once the number of changes becomes massive. And the PS3’s architecture is much more likely to be up to that type of task than any other device right now. It sure goes hand in hand with what some developers are saying. Hard to program but enormously fast once you’ve gotten the core branching up to snuff. I’m pretty tired of not being able to scratch the surface of a window using a bazooka while being able to break a door using a simple kick. It makes the game world feel lame and much less interesting. Or how about fighting an “army” of 20 or so characters. You get the point. Things aren’t that bad anymore but things can always get better. And no the 360 doesn’t have higher specs in the most important areas. It has quite a lot worse since its CPU has a problem keeping up with the Cell and is probable to hit a bottle neck bandwidth wise if it tries. It isn’t bad but it sure isn’t able to pull off as many tricks at the same time. Graphics wise the 360 might very well be more powerful. Its GPU is a very refined piece of technology. But if you want all aspects of a game to be stellar the 360 is very likely to be beaten. The games I’m talking about are those that truly explode with life and deepness (don’t know whether Lair will be any good but it sure doesn’t seem to be very easy on the CPU. The number of things being taken into consideration at any given time is simply massive and done right this massiveness can be applied to any other game as well. Those games are what interest me the most). But this doesn’t have to mean we will see massive loads of high performance games on the PS3. But for the console type of games that can only be pulled off on PS3 due to this CPU I believe some of them are bound to become quite stunning gameplay wise.

    But never the less there are games that can or will only be had on the 360. And it can create very beautiful graphics that are bound to beat what the PS3 will have in many games. So we’re all good.

    Yes RollMaster, I can’t stand Sony’s arrogance either nor that of any fanboy. I’m not a fan of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. I’m am how ever very impressed with Sony’s hardware but my reasons for that might very well be reasons that are unimportant to you. At any rate the 360 has got a lot more games to chose from than PS3 and if you like them then that’s all good. And Live is a lot more evolved than anything on the PS3 as it is. And Live community is stellar. But I don’t like the games as it is regardless of how many they are and how good and widespread the community is. So as it stands for me 360 has nothing to offer even though it has been in the market for quite some time while the PS3 offer me one game which is Motor storm and one hell of a high quality blu-ray player. So the PS3 gives me more than the 360 can even though the whole PS3 thing is so new and so unevolved. What happens next I don’t know but if the Sixaxis control scheme and Motor storm are any indications of what’s to come then I’m in for a treat. Regardless of how hard the Cell is to program for this game shows off physics and behaviour on an order of magnitude that I have never seen before. If this game makes bad use of the CPU then I can’t wait to see what will come once they learn. Incredible calculations and I’ve never been so caught up in a driving game before and that’s simply because no one has ever managed to pull of such heavy chaos oriented physics before. Cellfactor comes to mind but I’ve never seen it applied to a driving game like this. There are moments where the whole field of cars and bikes in front of you literally explodes into a got damned inferno of bits and pieces being torn off (bits and pieces that stay interactive... they have an effect on the full set of gameplay) and vehicles tumbling around where every move, twist and turn of everything on screen is being animated, placed and replaced based off of pure physics calculations. And it results in massive loads of fun and I’m not referring to the visual splendour of it. And the online feature is free to boot. But as I said the 360 exclusives that might be for me are on the way and can only be had on that machine and the 65nm processors will be coming and with them a more stable and hopefully quieter hardware. You never know.

    I've never been a fan of any company but rather liked or disliked any given machine released by any given company. To chose systems based on bias and a "we stand with you" kind of attitude is only crippling your choices and downright stupid in my mind. In other words I’ve owned almost all systems over the years.
    So I’ve been waiting for a good reason to buy the 360 ever since it came out. But I still haven’t found anything truly interesting for my preference. And I never forget when me and my friend fired up his newly unpacked 360 for the first time (mine hadn’t arrived yet) and how both nearly ducked as the machine started since it sounded as if it was ready for take off. Who was the great mind behind the decision of making it an excellent hair drier as well as a video game? But okay... the thing gets hot so it needs the blitzkrieg hair blower. Fine. But how come the DVD drive has to sound like a racing car (´Hitachi drive)? That thing is just the perfect side kick to that jet engine fan. So the Xbox 360 sounds like you’re blowing your hair while watching the motor sports news on the telly... great! I cancelled my preorder the following day. That thing is not possible. And you can’t put it in a sealed off area to get rid of the damned noise either because then it becomes an excellent egg boiler as well... with the added possibility of a lit up red ring to boot.
    So I’ve been waiting for the new 65nm processors. I really had my hopes up for this new sku.
    The very reason to release a new sku would of course be to add something new. Something stellar. This is supposed to be the “Elite” of all things 360, right? Yeah... so I was expecting new 65nm processors to get rid of this wonderful fan (or at least a new fan, christ!) with some added stability to boot and a new and very quiet drive as well. Preferably a built in HD-DVD but I wasn’t really expecting that. But it would be nice though. Anyway, it should definitely utilise a stellar HDMI port with the ability to send at least PCM sound but preferably the new HD sound formats as well.
    Sooo... the Elite is just around the corner with what I thought was my name written on one of them. So the specs of this “elite” machine are finally starting to surface. So what can it do? Well. It can still make as much noise as the other two skus and... that’s about it in the context of things. The bigger hard drive can be bought and fitted on any 360 so I don’t really count that overpriced piece of crap as qualified in turning a 360 into an “elite” piece of thing. But yeah, it does have an HDMI port that can send the picture in 1080p digitally... which is fine but hardly elite in my mind either. To be an elite HDMI machine you should be able to take advantage of HDMI features right? That is support at least some available high quality compression free sound formats. So can it? No it can’t. It turns out the Xbox360 Elite only supports HDMI ver. 1.2 and without(!) the possibility to send high quality sound streams at that. And according to a Microsoft employee it never will since the sound bus connected to the out-put ports lacks the bandwidth needed to feed the HDMI sound circuitry with the high bandwidth streams needed for HD sound. So HD sound will always have to be down mixed. What the hell. The HDMI port of the “Elite” is basically nothing more than a DVI port functionality wise disguised as an HDMI. I mean come on. Personally I will never have good use of the 120 gig HHD but if you are one of those that will due to the new so called HD movie downloading features on Live you will now never be able to experience the true sound of HD movies. If you haven’t heard high quality uncompressed movie audio streams yet then you won’t know what I’m talking about but it is safe to say you’re missing something big if you can’t use it. And if I want to look at HD-DVD movies I still have to buy that stand alone HD-DVD drive for it. Now that’s quite a buy isn’t it? You’d expect something elitish for your investment but as it turns out the Elite in itself doesn’t add very much of value and with the added investment of getting the HD-DVD drive you get an overpriced HD-DVD player with the worst performance of them all (you only get half of the HD concept experience being HD picture and HD sound – for less than the price of the Elite you get both features and more with a normal stand alone HD-DVD player) and by far the highest noise levels.
    I thought Microsoft was out to truly counter the absolutely killer package that the PS3 represents hardware and quality wise. Instead they give me a package that is just about as pricy as the PS3 but with lesser performance and lacking key features. And it still sounds like a hairdryer. This is a joke. With the PS3 you get what you pay for. It is whisper quite, has built in wifi, card readers for all formats, much higher performance CPU wise and as a blu-ray player is the highest performer out of all that I’ve tested concerning picture quality (haven’t had the opportunity to compare high quality sound formats as of yet). And it supports all available features regarding HD picture and sound. All of them including Dolby digital true HD, DTS master audio HD, 24Hz movie rendering, Deep Color rendering (up to 48 bit) and thus of course HDMI ver. 1.3 thank you very much. How’s that for a blu-ray player that has the lowest price tag? As a piece of hardware the PS3 absolutely reeks of quality both from a build as well as feature point of view. Hardly the words I would use for 360 as it is. There are some of us that regardless of how few we might be, really want to get the best experience possible and are ready to pay for it. My newly purchased PS3 has no problem shining among my set of overpriced sound and picture equipment. In fact the one piece within it that I would not consider to be overpriced but rather one helluva buy is the PS3. The 360 is even cheaper. But it is also considerably less of a bang. For the price of the Elite I expect a high quality hardware build as well as a full-blown feature build and this isn’t it. The only thing comparable to it’s closest competitor is it’s price. Feature by feature the 360 is less than the PS3 and if you want to add something you have to buy what Microsoft has on offer which isn’t cheap. PS3 is open in this regard. I can buy what the hell I want and from whom ever I chose. That alone adds a lot of value. Value that the 360 doesn’t have and can never have.

    Granted the 360 has a much greater portfolio of games but as I said earlier nothing that really interests me as of yet. I’m still waiting for 360 exclusives like Too human, Mass effect and Halo 3 to mention a few and I’m really looking forward to those. But I won’t be playing them as long as the 360 keeps behaving like a load of crap with pitiful sound levels and less than stable components. And this sku is the biggest joke since the dual HDMI PS3 only I’m not laughing. Seems like I will be stacking 360 brochures in the spot meant for “my” 360 just a while longer.

    Utgardaloki
    'The Gamespot years'.

  • Utgardaloki

    Posted Apr 29, 2007 6:44 am PT

    @ball_of_air

    "when you've finished your life story, why don't you just leave a decent comment?"

    While you were ditching my indecent comments why didn’t you grab the opportunity to act as the good example of leaving a decent one yourself? If you don’t like my comments then that’s fine. Not my business. If you think something is not decent how ever it would be nice if you had the decency of telling me what it is instead of giving me an empty comment.
    Cheers mate and cheer up

  • Xgouse

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 7:48 pm PT

    Thats why i waited for it b4 i bought it... I knew that whey would do something like this... See dont always go and buy the new toys'.... HAHAHAHA.... anyway... 479$ that's not to bad... Laterz... Robbie...

  • Yan1978

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 7:16 pm PT

    I was hoping for a quieter 360, since its pretty much the only useful feature the elite was introducing. I don`t want a black 360, black is the color of Sony, hence the color of failiure.

  • lam_jeremy

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 2:39 pm PT

    whats with all the deleted messages?

  • Ironwulfen

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 11:48 am PT

    why is it that 50% of all the comments here have been deleted by a moderator?

  • ball_of_air

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 11:09 am PT

    By the way, they're still using the 90nm processor. It'll just sound quieter as it's newer so it won't have gathered as much dust yet.

  • ball_of_air

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 11:06 am PT

    @utgardaloki:
    when you've finished your life story, why don't you just leave a decent comment?

  • Masterchief2434

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 10:13 am PT

    I know how to get it for free check this %$%*&^$ out http://www.3604free.com/index.php?ref=3830874 just copy and paste it

  • sb9999

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 7:41 am PT

    I just need the Xbox 360 Elite version. SO COOL!!!!!!

  • Utgardaloki

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 7:31 am PT

    @grafkhun

    I have been turning the volume up and it doesn't do me any good. The thing is how much volume do you need for parts of a game where there is very little or no sound? Not to mention how distracting the noise levels can be when watching a movie. I get aware of the 360 when ever there’s a scene that’s supposed to be silent. Many movie scenes build upon the tension of complete silence be it a subtle love scene or horror scene or anything in between. Not only does the noise take away from the experience in such occasions but the noise might actually block out or interfere with subtle sounds playing out within a scene. I remember when I switched out the noisy cooling parts of my PC for very silent ones and it made a world of difference. The atmosphere and experience rose by a big margin even though I was still playing the same games and watching the same movies. I remember one game where my character was, right after a big battle, standing on a hill top during the night where a subtle wind and nocturnal insects where creating these very subtle and atmospheric sounds. Very nice atmosphere except my PC was making as much sound as the game scene itself and suddenly I “wasn’t” on that hill top anymore. Then after I had swapped the cooling the same place and scene became a whole different experience all together and I felt much more pulled in. Granted I’m probably more nit picking than many others as I have spent quite the time and money building a light controlled home theatre taking care to use low noise parts for the tech side of things to not take away from the experience. I’m playing and watching movies on an 130 inch 1080p projected screen with a quite potent 7.1 surround sound system and everything that is supposed to be quiet is. Imagine the Halo3 trailer with this as long as you only hear the subtle piano and wind in the very beginning of it… it’s quite the atmosphere build up as long as nothing is troubling you. The 360 air plane spoils this. This might seem exaggerated to many but even friends that don’t care too much for this type of set up using regular TVs are complaining about the 360’s noise since it is intrusive. Most people get unpleasantly surprised by sudden and therefore highly noticeable degradation within a picture that draws your attention away from the game or film… and the same is true about the sound at least for a bunch of us. Microsoft should stop messing around with low quality components and build a machine with regards to the same quality guidelines followed by other companies in the game as well as home movie industry since that is what their machine is used for.

  • Bulldog19892

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 6:53 am PT

    Wait, there's a quiter DVD drive now? WTH? So I might have to upgrade my 360?

  • Kaihato

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 6:40 am PT

    The difference between HDMI and HD is not a huge life changing one, and if I want a damn black xbox, I'll take off the face plates and coat them black.

  • friscom99

    Posted Apr 28, 2007 5:53 am PT

    why so many messages deleted at the request of a moderator or admiinistrator?

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