Xbox 360 Jasper arrives – the end of the Red Ring of Death?
The Xbox 360 has suffered because of one particularly nasty, overriding issue: the dreaded Red Ring of Death. This hardware fault has seen millions of Xbox 360 owners suffer multiple console failures, and harmed the console’s reputation. But will the arrival, at last, of the new Jasper chipset mean those RRoD problems are now a thing of the past?
When the Xbox 360 was released in November 2005, hopes were high that Microsoft had finally got it right. Building on the relative success of the original Xbox, the 360 was built to be the most powerful games machine of all time, at least until the Playstation 3 came along and stole its crown.
There was one problem however – a problem that was discovered quite early on when people’s Xbox 360s started failing. It became known as the Red Ring of Death due to the three red lights appearing on the front of the console when the fatal hardware failure hit.
There was uproar in the gaming community, and Microsoft eventually offered to fix or replace every dodgy console in a campaign costing $1 billion. But the problems continue to blight early and mid-life machines to this day, prompting Microsoft to continually strive to improve the hardware.
We’ve already seen new chipsets replacing the older, more likely to melt, chipsets of old. Anyone buying a new Xbox 360 in the past few months probably has a Falcon-equipped console. But the even-newer chipset known as Jasper has now been spotted in the wild, where it will remain until being superseded by the future Valhalla chipset.
The Jasper chipset retains the 65-nanometer CPU (central processing unit) first seen with the Falcon, but the GPU (graphics processing unit) is also now 65nm. In layman’s terms, this means less heat and less noise will be generated by the console, meaning the likelihood of a Red Ring of Death is reduced almost completely to zero.
This has taken Microsoft an age to fix, but it looks like the RRoD time line is almost at an end. That is of course for owners of brand new Xbox 360s. Unfortunately, there are still likely to be consoles out there with old chipsets that could give up the ghost at any moment. It seems the RRoD issue won’t really be put to bed until we move on to the next generation. Xbox 720 anyone?
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23 Responses to “Xbox 360 Jasper arrives – the end of the Red Ring of Death?”
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November 29th, 2008
“built to be the most powerful games machine of all time, at least until the Playstation 3 came along and stole its crown.”
PS3 stole the crown of the most expensive console. After two years it’s fairly safe to say the PS3 is about the same as the XBOX 360.
November 29th, 2008
http://kotaku.com/5099978/requiem-for-a-console
we will all mourne…
November 29th, 2008
Well said me too
November 29th, 2008
I wonder what the PS3 fanboys are going to have to attack the 360 with now??
November 29th, 2008
Doubt it will make the console more quiet, as it was the drive that was the real offender there (of course solved with optional hdd installs).
November 30th, 2008
ummm… well… if the 360 is quieter and more reliable… then isnt that a good thing??? TIME TO REJOICE MA FWENDS!!!
also kudos on Microsoft for making a console that is not defective… OHHH YEAH !!! I went there… THANKS FOR DOING YOUR JOB GUYS!!!
November 30th, 2008
Yes RROD did suck but it didn’t suck as much as waiting for a game to come out for the PS3. You could have RROD 10 fold before you saw a game come out of development for the PS3.
November 30th, 2008
ok CAD… you dont mind shipping 360s back to MS to fix them and then wait a coupla days to come back… ok… cant argue with that… if you like that… thats great… I hope other people arent as retarded as you… then all companies will get a free ride to make their stuff as unreliable as possible…
I remember what N’gai said about the 360 issue… if the iPod had this much fail rate… there would be a huge uproar against Apple… seems like youre fine with ignoring the problem… nothing I can do…
November 30th, 2008
@ DWH, you can barely string a sentence together but you’re calling other people retarded? Wow
November 30th, 2008
If MS ever truly fixes RROD I might buy a 360. But until I have some decent expectancy of a life such as I’ve got out of my PS and PS/2 and PS/3 and PSP machines (each bought near launch and 100% functional still), MS won’t get any of my money. Maybe Jasper is finally it, but I’m giving it at least 6 months to sure.
November 30th, 2008
what the hell harry… my sentences are teh harcorez… watchu talking bout…
I thought we were fwends… by retarded I meant people who let things like failure rate slide because they “lub” the product… dont take that shit from them… I wouldnt take that shit from Sony if firmware 2.4 bricked my console… luckilly… I bought one after the 2.5 so all is well…
November 30th, 2008
@ DavidB – My falcon chipset seems to be running fine so far
November 30th, 2008
Your going to wait 6 months and miss out on so great gaming right now when there giving you a 3 year warrenty and the most downtime will be about 2 weeks and that probably won’t ever happen and if it does it might be in a year and remember you can download to the HD so the whole disk spinning and making it hot will probably never happen. Sorry DavidB but that logic doesn’t make sense. Just make sure your 360 is dated after October 2008 which you can check on every 360 Box before you buy it.
November 30th, 2008
As I’ve said before, I will have a 360 pro by Christmas, but the ps3 will still have no1 spot for me
(Can you use a mouse on 360 ?? I would like to give C&C3 a crack on it ??)
November 30th, 2008
DWH
Why should I care about failure rate when my 360 never had RROD and I did send it in but it was for something else and it came back in 1 week. So why should I bitch when some of the PS3’s top games are still in development and the system is 2 Years old?
December 1st, 2008
DWH, i told you before, that was just pillow talk so I can dump my jizz inside you.
December 1st, 2008
Last generation I owned a PS2 and traded it for a few weeks with a friend who owned an xbox. He wanted to check out the PS2 exclusives he missed, and I wanted to check out the Xbox exclusives (Splinter Cell, Half Life2, KOTOR, Ninja Gaiden). At some point I will pick up a 360 to check out the games I missed, but I will not do it until this issue is 100% cleared up. I can not believe that consumers knowingly do this to themselves and are happy about it. Having a console die and having to wait a week to get it fixed should not exist at all. They can charge $50 for it and I still would be hesitant about buying one.
December 1st, 2008
“I wonder what the PS3 fanboys are going to have to attack the 360 with now??”
I’m sure we’ll think of SOMETHING, Harry…
By the way, what’s the word on the New Xbox Experience, anyways? Hugely popular? Went off without a hitch? Runs smooth as a baby’s bottom? I thought so.
Oh, one more question: which 360 exclusive are you most looking forward to in 2009? The Halo expansion? Or the GTA expansion? Don’t worry, those will tide you over until they get around to actually releasing a brand new game worth playing.
Oh, and before I go, how are you and your friends liking Capcom’s new Street Fighter remake? Fun to play Street Fighter with such a great d-pad, isn’t it? Oh, it’s a wonky, imprecise mess? Huh, who would have thought…
-Arvis
December 1st, 2008
Chris,
Put those claws away sweetheart.
NXE is great! Downloaded and installed smoothly. My avatar looks cool, and everything is great.
I am looking forward to Halo Wars and Alan Wake.
I have not had time to take a look at Street Figher. My friends and I have been too busy playing Fable 2, Fallout 3 (the better console version), Left 4 Dead and Gears 2. But thanks for your concern.
Have you been playing LBP lately? What cool dresses have you put on your sackboy?
December 2nd, 2008
LOL – you guys
December 2nd, 2008
arvis – i don’t have much a prob with the dpad. maybe your skill in fighting games just suck as bad as your general gaming/hardware knowledge…
just a thought…
December 2nd, 2008
poor arvis – when out of ammo use the “exclusive” angle… who cares if sony’s “exclusives” are meh at best…..
exclusives are not longer the point of consoles. they don’t sell for longer terms than multiplats and don’t really impact long term sales as mgs4 proved.
most gamers don’t care about exclusives simply b/c they are exclusives. we like good games. if we can play them on lower cost console, with better online, better communications, and hidef graphics, this is only the icing on the cake…
and also why the ps3 can’t unseat the 360 even WITH their “exclusive” catalog….
reallity sucks, huh….
December 2nd, 2008
Harry,
*snikt*
Glad the NXE is working for you. Not everyone is so lucky…
http://community.lionhead.com/forums/thread/3233518.aspx
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=d849c4ab1b26b922cc47d8702abb6415&showtopic=699218&pid=590154364&st=0&#entry590154364
In fact, just a simple Google news search brings up more articles about NXE’s problems than articles about the service itself…
“I am looking forward to Halo Wars and Alan Wake.”
*cracks up*
“I have not had time to take a look at Street Fighter.”
Yeah, I’ve been a fan of the series since I was really young, but I can understand why you’d be playing those other games instead. My point was simply that fans of the Fighting genre (like myself) are easily frustrated with the 360 controller layout. Especially that d-pad. I’ve never heard of anyone who actually likes that d-pad…
As for LBP, Gamefly seems loathe to send it to me. Instead I’ve been addicted to Valkyria Chronicles and am just now getting around to Force Unleashed.
What dress did you put your NXE avatar in?
Glad to see you and I haven’t gotten rusty over the weekend.
-Arvis