Xbox360 Software Update To Quiet DVD Drive? >

	2007/02/21 12:02:06: Posted by DM
	According to a German gaming website, MS has provided a software update for debug Xbox360 boxes which reduces the speed of the Xbox360 DVD drive. This is in order to reduce the noise that the console makes when reading a disc at high speed. Rumor mill for now, but the update will reach end 360 users soon supposedly. >Link
	Labeled With  xbox360 microsoft rumor Comments [36]  | Rate this article: -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  | Avg. rating of 8.7

That sounds a 360 brick in the making.. seriously, i hope they test the heck out of it.

I hope so. Last night playing Crackdown co-op, it sounded like my 360 was about to launch into orbit.

this doesnt make any sense to me. why bother releasing a quiet drive for the 360 just to lower the speed? not to mention how reading speeds were the reason they chose a 12X drive.

i call bogus unless this is just used for specific tasks which is understandable. meaning if something can be streamed in the background without the need for max speeds then this would make sense.

i hope it's not true, i dont even hear my 360 when im playing games and its 3 feet away from me. i do hear the fans when im just sitting at the dash but that has never been the issue. i wont be happy if im forced to trade loading times for something that i dont even hear

my DC is louder so i cant complain. =)

man the 360 is loud as shit.. especially playing oblivion.. if anyone says that the 360's drive isent loud... there are lying... its kinda too late to fix this issue.. they should have had one when the system launched..(like the ps3)

then call me a lier, makes no difference to me. i dont notice any noise when i play 360 games, i dont see how that's so hard to believe. i never said it didnt make any noise, but i dont play my games on mute (not saying you guys do) so my gaming drowns out the system. like i said, my DC is louder.

it's never too late to fix anything. 360's made after 11/06 have the third drive which is a quiet drive. this is also why this rumor confuses me.

Kenny,

I'm with you on this. I have never notice a loud drive on my 360 and it could be because I play my games with sound. I have played over 125 hours of Oblivion with no complains.

What noise? My 360 makes the same amount of noise as my Dell. Barely noticeable. Oh but wait any minor noise may affect the performance of the 360. LMAO. Seriously U Sony fanboys are really reaching lately.

In other news, I believe Mr New York is done with Ken Kuturagi's pole... Sky your next in line, polish it right... I will check back in this evening to see how many more Sony Sausage Smugglers pile on the 360 for the supposed noisy drive. All I can say is it plays the games just fine. And I didnt have to pay an extra 200 dollars for it...

Can always hope, I don't own a 360 but even I get bothered by it.

Strange really.

im sorry but any one can tell you the 360 sounds like a washing machine.... i have both a 360 and ps3.... theres a HUUUUGE difference... FYI... that loud drive doesent stop me from playing oblivion though... :-)

my 360 is ok sound not a problem at all@NUTTSACK come on homo thug tired of hearing about poles. Are you a Homo belly dancer you love poles?Because right now your name fits a homo belly dancer.

I have both the 360 and PS3 and the 360's drive is clearly louder than the PS3's... but not so loud that it's annoying. It doesn't bother as much as the DVD-ROM drive in my PC. The drive in my PC sounds like an 18-wheeler driving over an infinite amount of rumble strips. It's definately time to replace that sucker.

Nuttsack, obviously it's a problem if MS is looking into addressing it. No one said it made games any less enjoyable. Death to anyone who voices a complaint or minor issue with the 360.

Who needs a software update if you can just hack the drive to make it quiet.

my 360 is kinda loud, but not too bad. just turn up the volume. anyways...so i was at best buy last night picking up Crackdown. Saw this guy asking a salesman about a ps3 (about 20 units). the salesman told him to get a 360 because the ps3 has no games. then that guy went to check out a ps3 kiosk for about 2 minutes, he went over to the 360 kiosk, that's when i went up and told him to just get a 360, he'll be much happier. he likes sports games to i told him he can get the sports game much cheaper than on a ps3. long story short, i sold him on getting a 360! hahaha =)

Be careful maddcoder, UTP may ask you to marry him if you keep up w/ that behavior.

lol @ Vae

well makes sense that the 360 is louder than the ps3 one drive is 12x, the other 2x, you can't compare that. with that said i've noticed it sounding loud when i start up the 360, but after playing i forget about it...

Response to daveydz3:

Perfectly said my friend!

The Xbox 360 12x DVD-ROM with a data transfer rate of 16MB per second for gaming applications spins SIX TIMES faster than the 2x BD-ROM drive used in the Playstation 3, which only has a data transfer rate of 9MB per second for gaming applications. The February 2007 issue of Independent Playstation Magazine makes this clear on page 61.

We know that Microsoft has used a couple of different DVD-ROM drives from different manufacturers during the production of the Xbox 360, since its initial release. Obviously, that isn’t anything unusual, although some of the drives had a reputation for being louder than others, and that is one of the reasons why those drives were stopped being used in production. The newest ones that were used in last adjustment make very little noise.

It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft would be able to use some type of software adjustment to make it so the DVD-ROM would make less noise, if you had one of the ones that was louder. If this rumor were true, it would almost certainly be based around a software BIOS update, similar to what gave the Xbox 360 the ability to use true 1080p in its videogames after all of the 1080p copyright restrictions were finally worked out in 2006.

mine is pretty damn loud. its annoying. i want the zephyr.

Response to maddcoder:

Ya know, I experienced a nearly identical situation in a store where a person was about to buy a Playstation 3 and a bunch of games from EA Sports and 2K Sports...then someone mentioned that the Playstation 3 did not allow those games to be played online in a way that allows Online Voice-Chat to occur...the guy says, "What, you mean the Xbox 360 lets me talk when I play online, but the Playstation 3 doesn't!"

And then the guy said, "For all of the EA Sport games, and all of the 2K Sports games, and just about every other third-party game, like the Call of Duty 3 game you have there, then, yeah, the PS3 doesn't let you talk when you play online."

This guy also was not aware of the fact that the PS3 controller does not possess the ability to rumble or vibrate. When he found that out, he slammed the Playstation 3 system down and left the store!

My 360 is loud but it does not distract from my gaming experience. I don't see how an update can actually lower the noise and not affect the speed of the drive which would mean longer loading, something I would not think is reasonable. Of course it is a rumor.

As for UTP wow just wow, what more can be said, I can see how that had to do with 360'sdrive noise, really I can...

@VaeVictus

lol, i was laughing to myself while walking out of best buy. i felt kinda good knowing i helped him save some money. even the employee there told him to get the 360! he asked me if i was gonna get a ps3 so i told him yes eventually when they drop the price.

I'm sure the guy "slammed" the PS3 down and angrily left the store. That sounds like it really happened. That is a common response of gamers who find out that rumble isn't included. I know that's what I did. No wait, I didn't. I don't like to make up BS stories and spread them as if they happened. Next we'll hear, "this one time,in band camp..."

cool

my xbox died, but the new one i got is noticeably quieter.

Next subject please... Vaevictus: Is the noise from the 360 DVD-ROM drive so bad that U cant stand to play the 360? IF your answer is no then this is nothing more than an annoyance. If it is so unbearable or is causing problems playing the games then I will be the first to get in line and complain.

Mr New York: How is Ken Kuratagi doing??? Dont be so rough next time. Handle his Sony Sausage with care...

@NUTTSACK how's your daddy doing buddy? Tell him i said hi.

NUTTSACK

I notice the sound while I am playing. It makes me wonder if my 360 is going to break (considering the massive problems that they've had with the system).

all fanboy rants aside, the 360 is actually on it's 6th revision since launch. while the noise from my launch system doesnt bother be at all, newer models created even months later are noticeably quieter, with the newest model making the 360 an actual "quiet" system. which is why this rumor confuses me.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ NUTSACK

I DONT KNOW why all you MS disciples(kenny k) are talking about mr Kutaragi , i mean does mr gates done something apart from wasting his money on xbox and xbox 360????

Mr kutaragi is the best and most sussefull console hardware engineer ever!!!

I would like to meet him one day.... other than that mr bill gates is nothing but a money sucker....that offer poor Operating systems , i would like to see sony making a os TO KILL microsoft and take all bill gates money!!

ahhhhehehhhhhhhhh SONY FOREVER!!!

@@@@ tecno geek

Well well well....TECNO geek is back on his old ways....

The XBox 360 is the noisiest component in my entertainment system, which includes two TiVos. It is certainly loud enough to be annoying the speaker volume is down, so I hesitate to leave a game on pause, for example. But from the sound, I always presumed that I was hearing fan noise rather than drive noise. I've never known a HD to be that loud, and I don't hear it seeking, just a steady whirr.

Tecno_Geek: Bill Gates could buy Sony. And thats just with the money he has given away to charities over the years. So sorry I offended U. Didnt mean to say such bad things about your man-crush Ken Kuturagi... I mean he does develop super-computers for the living room right. With CGI-quality graphics, 4D gaming right??? Just STFU Sony Sausage Smuggler. Why dont U ask Apple what Bill Gates has ever done. If the Windows OS is so bad why do 95% of all computer users run some version of Windows??? Sony make software, maybe they should stick to electronics, they are having a hard enough time with the PS3. Why dont U go play that Sony Skin-flute somewhere else...

Vaevictus: I hear strange noises too. Just like with my Dreamcast. Funny thing is... MY Dreamcast still runs fine. So does my 360. I will admit that the drive is above average in noise level. But my Dell DVD-Drive is 10 times louder, doesnt bother me. If it aint broke dont fix it... This is a non-issue

THINK PEOPLE THINK... there is more than one drive out there. You know that. The new drives (not the benq) are really noisy. I have mine next to me and when it fires up I cannot hear my computer fans at all. My wife can hear the machine in the tv room 20 feet away even with the door closed if the tv is not on. It is not the noise of the games she complains about, it is the noise of the drive when I am playing a game as I usually use headphones.

MS had to do something about the noise. They did it in the new machines by going to a dif. DVD drive. The machine is not noisy unless a game is in. Then, look out.



as an aside, I was actually hoping mine would break so I could send it back to MS and maybe get a new machine with a quiet drive.

I am sooo tired of the PS3, Xbox 360 comparison. Ok lemme point out some key things about Sony, they always try to make a new technology to pioneer the market and it ends up being a flop. Simple equation here---VHS or Sony's BETA=High Def- Or Blue Ray. Lets get real PS3 people, are ya gonna put money on Blue Ray technology, just ask those that bought a Beta in the 80's, they all went VHS in a year. So if I were you guys I'd be joining Xbox now and cut your future losses. LOL

Hey guys! I have been playing crackdown for about a week now and today all of a sudden my xbox started to get really loud and made a lot of loud humming noises. So I shut it off for a while. Now it won't play any of my games. It plays DVDs and Cds, but it won't play and 360 games. Any ideas whats wrong? I am pissed. I have only had it since Christmas!