X360 Halo3 w/Falcon chip (65nm)?

[Turok]

Hello everyone.

After researching to see if H3 is worth it (since IMO H2 sucked, mostly MP vs H1.) I was also researching about the consoles and the 65nm Falcon chip. While I looked around, I stumbled upon this thread from forums.Xbox.com:

http://forums.xbox.com/1/15804553/Sh....aspx#15804553

It seems that a few Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition consoles are shipping with the longly anticipated 65nm refresh. Consoles with dale lot "#0734" or newer seem to have the 65nm Falcon chip with a new heatsink.

Further through the thread, a test was posted:

Checking power consumption is really the only way to tell any differences in electronics. "New Design" can be printed all over but still you have to test it out to find out how much the new design helped. I used the same power supply, cables and hard drive for both tests. The Halo 3 console used .7 amps, this is measured from the AC side of the power supply, the Elite used 1.0 amps. That is 33.3% less amps, and very hard to make a human error doing this very simple test.

I went to the trouble of doing the test again this time taking pictures.

http://users.cescowildblue.com/jwsteed/images/Elite.jpg

http://users.cescowildblue.com/jwsteed/images/Halo.jpg

...they also show pics of the chip. I trimmed a 90nm X360 chip so you can compare:

90nm


65nm


BTW, my final verdict was to get the X360 H3 + H3 . This game better be good when it gets here, since it cost me $460 (w/S&H)!