Jasper Is Here: A Look at the New Xbox 360
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 10, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
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Power Consumption
The beauty of a console is that the specs never change, so while AMD, Intel and NVIDIA have to try to add new features or increase clock speeds with each die shrink, Microsoft gets to sit back and reap the benefits of cooler running hardware that's cheaper to manufacture. The move from Xenon to Falcon resulted in a pretty significant reduction in power consumption; under full load a Falcon Xbox 360 drew less power than a Xenon unit at idle.
The Falcon to Jasper transition isn't quite as dramatic unfortunately. I ran five power tests, I looked at power consumption at the NXE dashboard at idle, power consumption at the main menu of Rockband 2, Halo 3 and Gears of War 2, and finally if you don't own any of these games but want a comparison point I looked at power consumption of the Xbox 360 while running the BioShock demo (at the very start of the demo when you find yourself in the water surrounded by fire). Power consumption during actual gameplay doesn't go up much, if at all, compared to the start screens for these games - the main menu screens are all rendered in 3D and are apparently just as stressful as the games themselves, plus they're a very consistent way of measuring power consumption.
I used a Watts-Up meter which the Xbox 360 plugged into, so what we're looking at here is total system power consumption.
| Xbox 360 Revision | System Off | Idle | Halo 3 | Rockband 2 | Gears of War 2 | BioShock Demo |
| Xenon | 2.3W | 155.7W | 177.8W | 167.7W | 177.1W | 172W |
| Falcon | 2.8W | 101.4W | 121.2W | 112.8W | 121.5W | 115.5W |
| Jasper | 2.0W | 93.7W | 105.9W | 101.0W | 105.9W | 98.1W |
Overall you're looking at a 12% reduction in total system power under load and under 8% at idle, definitely not the ~30 - 35% drop we saw with the Xenon to Falcon transition, but not insignificant either. Remember that the smaller your transistors get, the more leakage current becomes a problem; while your transistors use less power, they also tend to use more power when they are in a logical off state than they should. There have also been a number of advancements in architecting for low power designs over the past couple of years that Microsoft hasn't taken advantage of as they would require a redesign of the 360's CPU/GPU. Microsoft is in full blown cost savings mode with the Xbox 360, the only things that will be done to that console before it dies are things to improve the Xbox division's bottom line.
Final Words
There you have it. Jasper is out and now we play the waiting game to see if the dreaded RRoD is finally solved with the latest batch of hardware changes. Even if it's not, if you are buying an Xbox 360 today you might as well opt for the cooler running, newly redesigned Jasper model rather than the year-old Falcon. Why pay the same amount for old hardware, it's just not the AnandTech way.
And once again, to those of you with Jaspers: congrats, after 3 years you may have just bought an Xbox 360 that won't die.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
That was one of the original bits of speculation on the RRoD failures, I've pulled it out since I'm not sure exactly what compound MS used. It's clear that MS viewed the connection between the GPU and motherboard as an issue thanks to the glue in the Falcon and later consoles.-A
gohepcat - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
Hey Anand,I know it's just anecdotal evidence that we can use to claim that the Falcon still had RROD problems, but NeoGaf has been keeping a pretty extensive tally for dead 360s and dead falcons seem to be very rare (at last count they only confirmed 1)
Do you know people with dead Falcons?
adhoc - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I think the glue is probably there to minimize stress fractures between the PCB and BGA chips which bend at different rates from the high-force heatsink. When large (both in area and weight) heatsinks are tightly fastened to PCBs (like many PC motherboards and I think the Xbox360), it causes the PCB to bend. I would suspect the glue is used as a propping mechanism so that when the PCB flexes, the BGA chip does as well starting at the glued edges rather than the solder points of the BGAs. It also might have an effect of "broadening" the flex of the PCB under the BGA so that the surface of the PCB won't be so concave between pins.Staples - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I really think the whole solder compound rumor is a myth. If it were that simple, then I am sure MS could have saved themselves a ton of money by using a different compound. It may cost a dollar more per system but it would save them 50$ a console since they would not have to replace 50% of them. Sure the solder joints may break but I doubt that it is because of it being made of the wrong material.And about the lead free solder, if that is what they are really using (which they should), it is possibly more brittle and could break under stress.
The0ne - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
Typically it's not the compound but more so due to bad soldering/contact. We've recently had similar issues with a few of our PCBs and it had me chasing down the cause down to the compound as well. As it turned out their SMT was fully capable one way or another where we had lifted pins, cold joints, reverse components, etc. These data didn't really showed until we started gathering more and more data to prove it.sprockkets - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
Isn't it true now that all solder has to be lead free?UltraWide - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
Only if you want to be RoHS compliant.Zorlac - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I think you meant "RRoD Compliant" ;)sprockkets - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
But now you cannot sell anything that is not RoHS compliant in the EU.sprockkets - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
OK, AMD's presentation explained it.