Pictures have been surfacing on the Internet that are said to be from China showing what appears to be a new populated motherboard from the next Xbox 360. We have examined a variety of these pictures for ourselves and have touched base with some of our contacts to see what we could find out. From what we have been able to learn, the pictures do seem to be more than an elaborate hoax and could represent an early test board for the next Xbox 360 revision.

The biggest question this time around is what will actually be a part of the next revision of the Xbox 360 console, and how much more will Microsoft be able to shave off the price? From what we have been able to learn so far, it does appear that this time around, Microsoft will be looking to create more than just a die shrink to reduce heat and cost. In fact, our sources do seem in agreement that the next revision of the Xbox 360 will feature the first actual comedic changes to the Xbox 360 since release. It is likely that it will be a slimmer form factor of some sort, but it is unknown how much Microsoft will be able to cut the price.

As for the internals, we hear rumors that Microsoft has re-worked and engineered the CPU and GPU to combine both into one chip that we think will likely be built on a 45nm process. At 45nm this would be quite a jump from the Jasper, which moved the CPU down to 65nm, but the GPU stayed at 80nm; but, since we are seeing ATI high-end chips of today already at 40nm we have to think that with a little help from ATI it would be possible to get the GPU down to 45nm without much trouble. The combining of both the CPU and GPU even at 45nm we suspect will produce a large chip. Some of our sources are theorizing that the TDP will likely be between 110 to 130 watts at least, even at 45nm.

One other interesting thing of note with these pictures of this new Xbox 360 motherboard that are floating around is that they have a traditional SATA connection on the board, which could mean that either Microsoft is considering moving to an internal hard drive or they just have not added the proprietary hard drive connector that they have used in the past. If they move to an internal hard drive, it brings up the possibility that users will likely not be able to replace the internal hard drive, and hard drive upgrades will not be part of Microsoft’s strategy going forward. We do think that users would still be able to migrate the data from their current external hard drive to the new internal hard drive using the transfer cable, however.

The idea that a lower cost and slim form factor Xbox 360 is on the horizon would be good for Microsoft with the upcoming release of Natal. The news that Microsoft might be releasing a lower cost slim console will not be good news for Sony. We will have to see how this plays out, but we have every reason to think that Microsoft is planning a console refresh.