I am beginning to wonder where this chipper of yours are reading about xbox... He must be making up things on his own. The GPU of all xbox's are the same, they only differ in when produced and of course the revision of them. The basic are the same though. They are all equaly good and there are no "lower quality xbox". Why would MS even build xbox of lower quality? Thats nonsense all the way.
To get more info about the xbox it must be opened and then it is required to take a look at what chips are on the motherboard. Thats where the difference is. They have one new chip in the 1.6 and there are differences in wich memory used in the different version of the xbox's.
If you are getting into the xbox world I can strongly suggest that you start and continue your journey over at
xbox-scene. They have guides for everything and the whole place is about xbox only. Once you get into the xbox for real you will discover the possibilites and what you can do by yourself real easy.
The real positive side of learning about xbox yourself is that you can config and put what you feel like on your xbox and get it running real smooth. After that it is no more only a gaming machine.
That chipper of yours doesn't sound to be so good at xbox, maybe he can do simple soldering on 1.0-1.5 xbox but more then that I doubt.
I hope I have been to some help atleast and maybe got you started.
If you decide to go take a look at xbox-scene you can reach me there too, same nick in the forums
