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EuroGamer Hardware Test: Xbox 360 Elite
>> The Xbox360 Elite has been out for a while now in the North-America, but Eurogamer.net posted a detailed review of the new hardware today:
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On the one hand, the core issue that most gamers had with the machine has barely been addressed. Yes, the machine is tangibly quieter than the current unit, but it's still loud when running a game from the DVD-ROM. It's also still a lottery as to which drive you'll end up getting, with the BenQ unit being a little less noisy than the Hitachi. However, the notion that there should be any disparity at all between any given system is crazy in the first place. Why not one use one supplier with a quiet drive? The stupidly large power block is unchanged too - another aesthetically hideous aspect of the 360 that I really wanted Microsoft to do something about.
The jury's also out on reliability. The Elite is a little quieter and hopefully the tweaked cooling solution will help the machines last longer. But the bottom line is that the same components are still pumping out the same amount of heat and historically that has not been good news for reliability. That being the case, we're inclined to ask where the 65nm revision of the PowerPC CPU has got to? It's not in the Elite, that's for sure.
However, on the plus side, I can't help but really like the new console. A lot. I've always admired Microsoft's philosophy of bringing HD gaming to as wide an audience as possible. Every HD-ready plasma and LCD has a component port, but with the 360 launch they went one better and provided VGA support - opening up a whole new range of potential new HD gaming screens for their system, or just freeing up an extra port on well-specified displays.
With the Elite, they've done it again with a brilliant quality digital output that works beautifully on any screen you plug it into, be it a low budget GBP 100 Chinese LCD monitor or a GBP 3,000 Panasonic 1080p plasma. Microsoft has stripped away the copy protection nonsense that plagues PS3's digital output and made exceptional picture quality available to gamers no matter what kind of equipment they use.
In many ways, the HDMI port and the bigger hard disk makes this the machine that the launch unit really should have been. However, I find it hard to recommend the Elite as an upgrade to a current model as all the evidence suggests that pumping the cash into an improved display gets you all the picture quality you could ever want from the current system.
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Full Story: eurogamer.net (7 pages)
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