Graphics Processing Unit
While the first Xbox's graphics processing unit was produced by Nvidia, the Xbox 360 had a chip designed by ATI called Xenos. The chip was developed under the name "C1" and "R500" was often used to refer to it. The GPU package contains two separate silicon dies, each built on a 90 nm process with a clock speed of 500 MHz; the GPU proper, manufactured by TSMC and a 10 MB eDRAM daughter-die, manufactured by NEC. Thanks to the daughter die, the Xenos can do 4× FSAA, z-buffering, and alpha blending with no appreciable performance penalty on the GPU. The GPU also houses additional capabilities typically separated into a motherboard chipset in PC systems, effectively replacing the northbridge chip. Due to the GPU frequently overheating in early motherboard models, Microsoft revised the GPU heat sink in order to better move heat away from the GPU die though not completely.
Read more about this topic: Xbox 360 Hardware
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