More Shops Sell Elite Early: Llamma Exposes New Motherboard Options

[Xbox-Scene]

More Shops Sell Elite Early: Llamma Exposes New Motherboard Posted by XanTium | April 19 23:43 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From llamma.com: [QUOTE] We were fortunate enough to find one at our local Wal-Mart here in Minneapolis. We have had a chance to crack it open and document some of the differences between the Elite and the original Xbox 360. * Our first pleasant surprise is a Hitachi GDR-3120L FK78 DVD drive inside. * Both the CPU and GPU both sport different revision information on the chips but its hard to say whether or not 65nm has been implemented. One of the more interesting observations that seems to point to lower power consumption implying a possible 65nm core is the fact that there are some capacitors and VRMU's that have been removed on this revision of board. * One a side note, we all had a good belly laugh here at the shop when we saw Microsoft's most creative measures to minimize the dreaded Xbox 360 3 flashing red lights "ring of death" error caused by poor BGA connections of the CPU and GPU. Take a look at the epoxy surrounding the CPU and GPU which is intended prevent the BGA connection from popping as the board warps. This has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. * We disassembled the HDD and found a Fujitsu MHW2120BH drive inside. Our initial attempts at dumping sector 16 using The Specialist's hddhacker application was not a success. It appears that the tool does not yet support the new 120GB drive. * Another difference you will find is the fan header. It has been switched from a 4-pin Molex Mini-Fit connector to a standard good old three pin fan header style connector. * There has been a million pictures of the HDMI port and HANA HDMI scaler chip but here's a couple more for good measure. [/QUOTE] Full Story: llamma.com (incl. more details and pictures and an animated gif comparing old and new motherboard!)