SlashGear

So if you owned or know someone who owns an older model PS3 and then got your grubby little hands on a PS3 40GB model, you might have noticed its about 6 decibels quieter, puts out less heat, and uses about 100 watts less power. Well, that’s not a fluke, it’s a hardware upgrade.

The 40GB PS3’s do in fact have 65nm process cell processors, but the graphics hardware is still running on a 90nm process, so the switchover isn’t complete. Sadly you also lose all backwards compatibility which kind of sucks.

For those of you that can’t fathom the reasoning behind backwards compatibility being a major issue, it is as follows, early adopters, the fans of the Sony gaming line, got stuck with a choice of 5 or 6 hundred dollar bills for their systems, maybe more if they bought it off of the grey market. So, it would follow, that if they were that big of a fan, they had previous PlayStation systems and thus older games, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like taxing my electrical system until the break blows or a fire catches, so the fewer systems I have to keep hooked up the better.

Thanks Sony: 40GB PlayStation 3 Uses 65nm Cell Afterall [via DailyTech]