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Company Sells 'Turbo' 1.4GHz Xbox

Posted by simoniker on from the all-about-the-bells-and-whistles dept.

cdneng2 writes "The Inquirer has an article about a TaiPei company that is selling a modified Xbox running a 1.4GHz Celeron, versus the console's 733MHz Pentium III. The firm, Friendtech is also offering an Xbox Mod that provides S-Video, 5.1 Surround, and a hard disk upgrade in one package." There are some pictures of the prototype on the official site, although it's unclear if the legally uncertain mod will make much practical difference to native Xbox games (Polygonmag claims "the prototype loaded data at nearly twice the speed of a retail Xbox.")

1 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And then... by Babbster · · Score: 2, Informative
    Is there any problems with the current Xbox loading or playing speeds? (I don't have one, so I don't know). I mean: unless you're installing Linux on it and you need a real fast machine, what problem is this a solution for?

    When comparing it to other consoles playing console games, the Xbox works just fine and loads faster than the other two most of the time - depending on the software, the Gamecube can keep up and, of course, the PS2 is dirt slow - so improving load times certainly isn't a huge incentive. For regular gaming, there's absolutely no need for a faster processor and I can't imagine a circumstance where it would be a significant advantage. After all, without upgrading the GPU (which, just as with PC gaming, is where you get most of your performance improvements) it's doubtful that you could improve the Xbox's intended performance in any meaningful way.

    As you correctly point out, though, modded Xboxen running other operating systems (most notably Linux) could benefit from the speed bump. One area that I can see an advantage is in running emulation software, depending of course on what you're emulating.

    This is a niche product for a very niche market. The stock processor in the Xbox is more than sufficient for most computing tasks one would want to use an Xbox for. If someone needs more, it seems like a better plan to hunt down a cheap PC.