The Report of My Thermal Death Have Been... 559
A reader writes "Not too long ago, Tom's Hardware posted a video of the grisly events that take place when the heatsink is removed on an AMD Athlon MP 1.2GHz in an attempt to show that the chip has inadequate thermal protection unlike the Pentium 4. Apparently, this is not the case. This new video, which looks like was done by AMD, shows the system continuing to work when the heatsink is removed. Even 9 minutes of Quake3 without the fan operating wasn't enough to destroy the processor. So who is right? It's in AMD's best interest to show that their product doesn't disintigrate under extreme conditions. " Update: 10/30 14:11 GMT by H : Note that it was Terry 'quad3d' Wang that actually did the video - not AMDZone.
whatever (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure a fan can fail, but there are monitoring systems that tell you when this happens...
Re:whatever (Score:5, Interesting)
The bad thing is that there are so many ways to screw up. You could get fooled into using one of those neat spacers which might happen to be too thick, resulting in inadequate cooling, thus frying the processor. The Athlon processors can burn before the POST is through, so if your heatsink has fallen off or shifted during transport, you're up for some quick, expensive fun.
Also, you could be one of those freaks using a water cooling system (please shoot me when I start pumping water into my computer!). There's a nice article over at Dans Data [www.dansda...argetblank] about a burnt Intel Celeron(!!) after a cooling failure.
A third problem is the limited use of most monitoring programs or a bad configuration. Motherboard protection can be configured so that all you get out of a failed fan is a nice beeping noise. I tell you something: no one can hear you scream in a dark cellar. I have an old Slot A Athlon 750 running nonstop, and if the fan fails, I'll most probably lose it. The only solution would be to have a monitoring program slow down and/or even shut down the system. Some BIOSs/Mainboards don't support this, so it would be pretty much impossible to prevent an incident directly after switching on, because when the speaker starts beeping it might be too late.
So far, the only solution I've seen to this is an extension to the VapoChill rigs. The system is held in reset state until the cooling system has reached its (sub-zero) working temperature. Only then, the reset bridge is opened and the system is allowed to start up. I have not seen any comparable functionality on a mainboard so far and I don't know whether it would actually help or if the processor produces enough heat even in reset state.
Re:whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you should read the referenced articles before posting?
1. Many people find they need a rather big (and heavy) heatsink to keep an Athlon cool enough. These heavy heatsinks can fall off.
2. The CPU thermal sensor used on Athlons cannot respond to temperature changes faster than about 1C/second. Tom's tests showed the CPU melting in just a few seconds, so your monitoring software would do nothing to help you in that case.
One problem. (Score:3, Informative)
But Tom was testing on a system that DID NOT SUPPORT PowerNow. Yes. It had support for reading the thermal diode. But, IIRC, simple support for reading the diode doesn't equate to PowerNow support.
So yeah. If you run on an older system without PowerNow, it's the same as running an Athlon without a thermistor.
On a setup that actually supports the thermistor, the system will shut down in time.
Re:What the fuck (Score:2)
I have a large desktop fan pointed into my system right now (don't laugh, it reduces the CPU temperature by 15-20 degrees). I would guess its weight at 3-5 pounds.
Re:What the fuck (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You know, guys... (Score:2)
Trouble is, not everybody can afford to buy a new CPU every few weeks when their old one burns out.
Incidentally, your sig (even when the
Re:whatever (Score:2)
Third party verification (Score:3, Redundant)
This one should be pretty easy to test...Someone just needs to have the resources to risk frying a few dozen processors.
I was a little surprised when I read the results on Tom's Hardware...I would have expected they could see this could be a major issue for AMD and would have run even more tests to make sure their results were accurate and not a bad batch or something like that.
Hate to see Tom's take a credibility hit on this one, so it will be interesting to see how this one unfolds!
Re:Third party verification (Score:3, Insightful)
Tom has always been outspoken on the whole Intel/Rambus shenanigans, and he was the one who found whatever flaw it was that gave the original P3 1.1Ghz chip to falter.
I think it's safe to say that he wouldn't be badmouthing AMD's product if he hasn't found a decent reason for doing so.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
When I stopped reading Tom... (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I went to college, still a reader.
Taking a few courses on hardware however, made reading his reviews painful.
He doesn't understand hardware, and it shows. Sure, he is able to run tests, but his reasons are completely flawed.
I don't accuse Tom of being on the take... However, I think that Tom should stick to testing, and not give his "engineering" insights that are based upon made up terminology and without an engineering basis.
This is a more reasonable review, and the first one that I viewed of his in years.
Alex
It depends on if de bloody mainboard is compatible (Score:2)
If the mainboard is compatible & is able to read the intenal thermister inside the AMD CPU then the CPU will just throttle back more 'n more as it gets hotter & hotter, eventually when it hits the maximum barable temp it will shutdown..
If the motherboard is not compatible, then either your computer will shutdown straight away or your CPU will fizzle (depending how your bios is setup & how your CPU fansink's fan is wired - if your fansink's fan is plugged into the motherboard's CPU fansink header connector & your bios is set to 'auto-shutdown on CPU fan failure' or something like that, then your computer will just shutdown straight away when it detects the failed fan, if not your CPU will fizzle)
Re:It depends on if de bloody mainboard is compati (Score:2)
Re:Third party verification (Score:2, Interesting)
It's that simple!
Palomino cores have thermistors built in (Score:2)
However if the CPU's fansink is plugged into the motherboard's CPU fansink header connector & your bios is set to 'auto-shutdown on CPU fan failure' or something like that, then your computer will just shutdown straight away when it detects the failed fan.
What Tom was I assume testing was the internal thermistor that all AMD Palomino cores have (Athlon MP, Athlon XP, & Morgan cored Durons).
In which case, if the mainboard is compatible & is able to read the intenal thermister inside the AMD CPU then the CPU will just throttle back more 'n more as it gets hotter & hotter, eventually when it hits the maximum barable temp it will shutdown
As far as I know, so far the only Socket A boards compatible with the Palomino's intenal resister are the latest Seimens boards, they of course still have thermisters inside the socket for compatibility with older T'bird Athlon & Spifire Duron cores, too.
Tom's Video (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Tom's Video (Score:2)
Well you're obviously not a hardware engineer (Score:2)
I used to work with all kinds of custom ICs and trust me, 700F is perfectly possible. I've even seen circuits that worked pretty well with components at about 300F. When I was a beginner HW engineer I was looking into problems with a board we were making, and I wanted to see if some components were overheating. Stupidly I touched them with my finger. Ouch!. My finger touched the component for far less than a second and I was severely burned. Think "touching a soldering iron tip with your finger" type burned.
This isn't to mention all the times when a layout error resulted in powering on a system and watching components explode, fire, smoke, etc.
An electric burner doesn't heat up very quickly compared to fried electronics. The reason why is simple. An electric burner dissipates a few hundred watts over an area that's at least 5cm by 5cm. When a chip fries you can dissipate 300W over an area that's less than 1cm by 1cm. That's a lot more energy in that small area.
I've seen many components that were fried and the solder disappeared. Seeing as it takes a temp of about 400F to melt solder, it would take a lot more to flash it into nothingness.
But don't trust me. Miswire some electronics and see for yourself.
Re:Well you're obviously not a hardware engineer (Score:2)
Re:Tom's Video (Score:2)
My knowledge of electronics is limited at best, but it sounds as though you're assuming the CPU would stop conducting electricity as soon as it's "toasted" and would therefore cool down immediately. However, it seems more likely to me that once the CPU is toasted, the trace paths on the die are literally melting together inside and you basically have a big blob of nicely conductive material before long that's gonna conduct as much electricity as your power supply will provide. Just a thought. I could be totally wrong, perhaps once the CPU kinda melts it short-circuits the whole thing. This is Slashdot, I'm sure someone will correct me.
Built in heatsinks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Later,
Affe
Re:Built in heatsinks... (Score:2)
And there's aht whole modularity thing. Using some arctic silver thermal compund with a good heatsink is wholly adequate for pretty much any overclocker's situation - usually something else becomes a limit before the joint between the die and heatsink becomes the limiter.
Re:Built in heatsinks... (Score:2)
Generally, the retail (boxed and shrink-wrapped) version comes with a heatsink/fan already attached. I have such an athlon, and the fan is hideously noisy.
The OEM version doesn't come with any extra stuff because Original Equipment Manufacturers usually want to make their own decisions on things like this. However, end users (even inexperienced ones) often buy OEM CPUs because they're cheaper, and occasionally have problems such as fried CPUs as a result.
Re:Built in heatsinks... (Score:2)
I *have* seen socket-based retail CPUs that came with a built-on heatsink/fan, but these were from Intel.
Re:Built in heatsinks... (Score:2)
Second, over clocking is NOT looked on favorably by any processory manufacturer, at least not officially. Including a larger heatsink/fan for overclocking would be condoning overclocking.
Re:Built in heatsinks... (Score:2)
IIRC, overclocking really took off with the Celeron 300A, which could be overclocked to 450 Mhz-- a substantial performance improvement when one considers that the PII-450 sold for 3 times the price of the Celeron-300A.
On my athlon 800... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm impressed that that heat could fry the mobo but NOT The processor, it's sort of weird actually. But there are a whole lot of things on most motherboards right next to the processor, and on mine they all looked slightly burned.
Correct me if Im wrong... (Score:2)
Only when the heatsink is left on, but the fan power is disconnected, does it last 9 minutes.
The thing doesn't last 9 minutes with the heatsink off, crikies....
Isn't that a good thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I'm missing the point...
F-bacher
Re:Isn't that a good thing? (Score:2)
Re:Correct me if Im wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
AMD's test is apparantly usings a thermal shutdown sensor, which shuts the power down when the CPU gets too hot. Not all motherboards have those, and they can be disabled in software. Intel processors apparantly have a similar function built-in.
Re:Correct me if Im wrong... (Score:2)
The article ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the text of the new article direct from the source [amdzone.com]:
Thanks to the millions of people who e-mailed me about this.
Do we title this: We TOLD You So!
or do we title it: Maybe we were right about him?
or do we title it: AMD Won't Burn a hole in your wallet, or your motherboard?
or do we title it: AMD Slaps Around Little Tom-Tom? as Van Smith put it?
Well whatever you want to call it, there is a new video out on the internet showing what REALLY happens to an AthlonXP (or MP) when your heat sink falls off, or when your fans fails. Now I'm not saying that Tom Pabst is completely wrong, but let's just say this makes his testing methods look a little 'suspect' at best. Here's a quote from Van Smith:
A video has appeared on the Internet countering a huge dose of FUD my former employer inexplicably dumped on his readership a couple of months back. The new video, with AMD credits all over it, is entitled "How an Athlon(tm) MP 1.2GHz Really Copes with Heat Emergencies." The piece demonstrates the AMD Palomino Athlon subjected to brutal circumstances such as heat sink removal while playing Quake III and boot up attempts when a CPU cooler is not attached. In all scenarios, the Palomino comes out unscathed. A similar though much less thorough test came out with unsurprisingly different results at Tom's Hardware. Ouch! Looks like dispensing bad medicine can result in a mouthful of looser teeth. Good job Ben & Joe, perhaps you can also give THG a crash course in analyzing computer technology.
The video also presents the much more realistic situation when the CPU fan fails. In that case the Palomino continued to play Quake III for several minutes before shutting down. Again the chip was undamaged.
This video may look like it's from AMD, but I'm pretty sure it's not, even if it makes a great case. The original download site appears to be down, so I mirrored it onto AMDZone right here.
Other mirrors: Mirror. [kaosoverlords.net]
Update: One of our readers e-mailed me to give me his first hand experience with the thermal control capabilities of the AthlonXP:
I installed my amp1800 (sic) with the heat sink rotated 180 deg. and after 3 hours of trying, incessantly, and not being able to boot I found the problem, I rotated the heat sink and all is fine. I must say, I was sweating bullets when I found the problem.
No fried chip, no smell of burned silicon. Looks like the thermal diode is working.
(end article)
~Aaron.
Re:The article ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on which HardOCP article you beleive... (Score:2)
"One thing that has been worth looking forward to is the addition of a thermal diode inside the core of the AXP CPU.This will for allow you to read the core temperature when the right hardware and software are present. You might have seen a famous hardware site make the statement on a video recently that even while their Palomino has a thermal diode in place, it burned up anyway when they removed the heatsink. Well, this was no fault of the AMD CPU, just the fault of the misinformed operator. You must have a board that has the ability to utilize the diode and also have the proper BIOS to facilitate a system shutdown in a high core temperature situation. Of course, making it work cooler now allows us to speed it up and make it work hotter later!"
Tom's is usually pretty accurate but he too has had some knocks on his credibility from time to time. I think the best thing we can take from this whole incident is never take any site's opinion as gospel. Always read several site reviews before making a decision about a product.
Re:Depends on which HardOCP article you beleive... (Score:2)
And, from THG's article [tomshardware.com], it's stated that (a) only 2 motherboards were known, at the time, to contain that circuitry; (b) THG used one of those boards (from Siemens), and was assured "that the thermal protection circuitry is definitely working on their motherboard"; and, from Siemens' engineers that, (c) "the thermal diode of Palomino is unable to react quickly enough. Only 1 degree/s is what the thermal diode is able to handle."
I'd say, all in all, Tom was pretty accurate in his reporting on this. Assuming his board and CPU weren't out-of-spec faulty, and that Siemens' knows what they're talking about (which we have no reason to doubt, they did design the mboard logic to communicate with the CPU diode), my conclusion is that the diode didn't react quickly enough to shut down the system. Are the AthlonXP's and/or a different motherboard able to cope better? Perhaps...But the one THG used certainly wasn't.
And now we know one of the ways AMD cuts costs....It's a pretty unlikely scenario, IMO, but it deserves recognition at any rate....
Re:The article ... (Score:4, Insightful)
HardOCP.com ran an article the other day that said they were installing an 1800+ XP processor, and reached across the desk to grab something, bumping a key on the keyboard, which booted the machine with no heatsink and destroyed the processor.
You're saying that they worked on a powered machine and blamed AMD when they fucked it up.
ATX power supplies, unlike AT power supplies, run power through the motherboard whether the system is on or not. Some newer motherboards have a giant green LED in the middle of the board to alert you of this fact. (It even glows for like five seconds after you pull the power, since the capaciters take some time to discharge.) This is what makes possible the keyboard power-on feature that you described, as well as scheduled power-on and such.
You never work on a machine that is receiving power. Since they made such a basic mistake, I wouldn't trust their diagnostic skills. Don't believe them when they say heat fried the processor.
(Side note: while you don't want the machine to be powered, it is a good idea to make sure the machine is grounded to avoid static damage. For this reason, I'd suggest plugging it into a power strip and turning off the power strip. Ground but no power.)
the probability that your heatsink is just going to fall off is pretty low anyway. If the lack of heat protection keeps the cost down, then I'm all for it.
Agreed. Someone made the comparison between running a processor with no heat sink and running a car with no coolant. The car isn't exactly going to like it, either. Why do we consider this such a problem for PCs? Heatsinks don't just fall off. If they did, it couldn't be good for the system anyway to have a huge conductor rolling around on your motherboard.
Re:The article ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tell that to the remains of the 1GHz Athlon I have sitting on my desk. One of the nubs on the CPU socket broke and let the heatsink fall off while I was at work. I'm not sure how long the CPU lasted, but it was dead when I got home. From that point on, I won't buy a heatsink that only uses the two middle nubs to latch on.
Re:The article ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The article ... (Score:2, Informative)
I suspect the problem may be that the motherboard Tom used did not properly support the Palomino core's thermal diode protection. This is not a problem with intel cpus as they have all the required saftey circuitry on die.
Re:The article ... (Score:2, Informative)
It's also probable that the Athlon XP is of a different stepping than the Athlon MP, and the 1 degree/s limitation was remedied (or it was a siemens board problem that they were unwilling to accept responsibility for).
Note: MAX6512 is an EXTERNAL temp sensor (Score:2)
So it is apparently a mobo feature that uses a thermal diode integrated into the processor. Is the thermal circuit in the Pentium totally self-contained?
Re:The article ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I reguarly overclock my CPU's, and I know, that if something stupid like a cpu fan falling off blows up my cpu, IT WAS MY FAULT, not the manufacturer who has already stated the recomended maximum speed of their cpu.
And the suggestion that the motherboard makes a difference, LOOK PEOPLE, if you aren't going to read, don't comment, the thermal diode is ON the core! 2nd search result on google [overclockers.com], in the very first sentence of the article!
A friend of mine had a pre palomino Athlon and he run it for 2 weeks without a fan, with NO permanent damage, and this computer is only used for watching DivX's and playing the latest games.
And, as a personal opinion, in the last 12 months, toms has been awful, and, I hate to say it, but completely wrong, when it doesn't suit the people with the big dollars, but we can't blame poor Tom, he get stuff before release, and has to keep the right people happy, or they probably wouldn't give the stuff too him. What a screwed up world...
my experience (Score:2)
Re:my experience (Score:2)
dave
Toms review (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Toms review (Score:5, Interesting)
It could well be a case of passing the buck because they didn't want to blame their motherboard which may not have implemented support for the thermal diode properly. That's my conspiracy theory, anyway.
Re:Toms review (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry - how did they "carefully engineer" it so the rate of change is below the threshold? It looks to me like they pulled the heatsink straight off, which is exactly what was done in the Toms hardware review. So now you've seen two basically identical tests product completely opposite results. Who to believe eh?
Personally, I couldn't care less. The odds of a heatsink accidentally dropping off are pretty slim anyway, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Re:Toms review (Score:2)
The tests aren't basically identical. AMD was using a newer version of the processor, with different thermal protection. AMD's tests are relevant if you are putting together a new Athlon system. Tom's tests are relevant if you are worried about an Athlon system that is a month or two old or older.
Re:Toms review (Score:2)
Re:Toms review (Score:2)
Re:Toms review (Score:2)
Why? Really, why would you? You can't protect people from idiot rash. All over AMD's tech documents, you get the message repeated over and over and over: for the love of god, don't power this up without a heat sink and fan. It couldn't be clearer.
You might as well say that AMD should design chips for people who run bare mains voltage wires across the pins. It's willful and self inflicted. You can't design on that basis.
Re:Toms review (Score:2)
While I've never seen an otherwise stable machine's heatsink fall off, I use to work Dell Tech Support, and had probably 10 or so calls in a year with the heatsink, fan and/or processor coming loose in shipment. This was with Slot 1's, and most prevalent when they first came out. After a few months or so, they redesigned the supports to make it less likely.
I don't see this as an issue in normal circumstances, but if you're lugging your PC around to LAN parties or shipping it, pop it open and take a look when you get there....
this has nothing to do with the CPU (Score:5, Informative)
I wish people would at least FILTER some of these posts. Its seems that
Re:this has nothing to do with the CPU (Score:2)
Re:this has nothing to do with the CPU (Wrong!!!) (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is a feature that needs MB support, it should be explitly advertised as such and then we may see fully XP supporting boards.
So the chips get hot. Who cares? (Score:2, Funny)
Besides, alot can be forgiven of the company that gave me a real math co-processor and "fast" math toys on Hercules graphics for my 4/8 mhz(turbo!) 286.
I don't trust Tom... (Score:5, Insightful)
I watched this video and found it quite interesting. One difference between this video and tom's video was the motherboard and chipset that was used, that could have something to do with the different outcomes. Tom used some motherboard I've never even seen before, I had to hunt the net to find info about it. The new amd video uses a motherboard with the amd 760 chipset.
My other issues against tom are the benchmarks that he uses now, compared to what he used to do. Last review I just remember seeing the bapco and quake3 tests. Which is interesting because of all the rumors that bapco and intel are the same company. Read here [vanshardware.com]. Then the quake3 benchmarks... umm, wasn't that what the P4 was optimized for? I remember back when the K7's first came out and tom threw a barrage of tests at it... a good FPU one was the 3DStudio one (which I didn't see in the last test).
Lastly, I remember the massive intel ad banners on the site when Tom did the 2Ghz P4 review...
So in my eyes, Tom sold out and I don't trust his reviews anymore.
Re:I don't trust Tom... (Score:2, Informative)
Seems very thorough to me. Also he concluded the Athlon was better than then Pentium.
Re:I don't trust Tom... (Score:2, Insightful)
His job is not publicity, it is reviewing.
Danger? (Score:2)
I wish I had some certainty about the actual danger of these chips. Again: I don't mind the very small risk of loosing a CPU/board . I do mind any risk of a fire.
fire (Score:2)
I love big computing equipment, but not when it's sitting in my house making noise and sucking power
Re:Danger? (Score:3, Funny)
1) CPU burns out internally, then everything stops
2) Nice metal case around computer
You can set fire to chocolate if you use it as a heatsink though - look at the HardOCP archives.
Re:Danger? (Score:2)
I've got a busted UPS that had a large cap go poof, and while this appears to have liberated a rather large amount of smoke and heat, only things within 2" on the board were damaged.
Point is, most violent component failures don't do much damage, and it helps that most electronic devices are cased in metal.
I'd say the chance of your Athlon setting your house on fire is about as high as your DVD player setting your house on fire.
C-X C-S
A Computer Shop's point of view (Score:5, Informative)
And the fact of the matter is that AMD CPUs can really burn up just like in Tom's Video.
We've seen more than once, a customer coming back with what he said was a defective AMD CPU, and when we check the CPU, we could see the adhesive barcode that we put on the underside of each, partially burned out !
And don't get me started on the damn fragility of those AMD CPU, we've got dozens of them broken because some guy slipped when installing a fan on them.
Murphy
Re:A Computer Shop's point of view (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that I'm taking sides, but have you bothered to check if the *working* AMD chips (and Intel chips) are burning their adhesive out also? It sounds like you're using regular barcode stickers, and personally I doubt that they can even survive a cool CPU for any extended period of time.
Jason
www.:P.com [colonpee.com]
Hardware p0rn (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care who is making them, it must be stopped. Will someone think of the children!
Not Convinced, non-standard setup (Score:3, Flamebait)
The new Athlon XP+ range now includes an internal diode like most Intel chips, by the time external sensors beneath the ZIF reacted it was too late, fried chip. So an internal diode, great you may think, but basically nobody has implemented the code to even query the sensor let alone set up the board to auto-shutdown. Tom used a board that implemented reading the internal sensor, it did just that, but the auto-off functionality wasn't there, again, fried chip. If AMD have to use an older Athlon with an external diode then it pretty much proves the functionality for reading Athlon XP sensors isn't on any board, yet.
Also... this thing crashes, certainly better than a fried chip but remember the P4 automatically scales clockspeed to temperate and doesn't crash, even if it means running at 100mhz (no data loss).
Re:Not Convinced, non-standard setup (Score:2)
I guess we're just gonna have to disagree here. If something inside of ANY piece of electrical gear goes into a thermal runaway, I want an immediate shutdown. Off, not on, not throttled, but removed from the electrical current feeding it.
Whole thing is kinda silly anyway really. My biggest concern outside of a fire would be the heatsink plummetting through all my interface cards and denting the bottom of the case. Ahhh, but this anvil does keep things cool.
Well... (Score:2)
Given the choice... (Score:2)
I can hardly imagine how there could be this large a difference. Either the systems were NOT the same (hardware-wise), or the burn-out chip was poor quality, or AMDzone is lying, or Tom's is mistaken/lying, or this has been misreported.
I see no way in which you could "mistake" as to whether or not a processor burst into flames upon cooler removal. That sort of thing is pretty much an either-or that anyone with eyes can determine.
-Kasreyn
Re:Umm, what part of (Score:2)
If the chip hits 370 degrees in a few seconds, and the thermal diode in the CPU itself can only handle 1C/sec then it doesn't matter what mobo you use.
However the fact that the chips were completely different, and the second video appears to be done by AMD means that the comparison is moot. However, if this test is indeed true, then it just means that AMD fixed the problem in their latest chips, not invalidated Tom's tests.
Another test.... .45 to the core (Score:5, Funny)
Scientifically fire a
Tests may show that the Athlon does not hold up under impact of a projectile. A video of this process may be necessary to prove the point to the skeptical.
Naysayers and Athlon proponents may argue that this test does not reflect real-world operating conditions, but who cares -- it's a great video.
Matrix soundtrack (Score:2)
Ahem. ATTENTION! (Score:2, Redundant)
Go back and watch again. I think this makes far more sense. AMD would not publish a video that was outright forged, they would be silent on the matter. Tom would not gain anything by publishing misleading data.
THE PROBLEM IS THE DIFFERENT CHIPSETS USED.
Re:Ahem. ATTENTION! (Score:2, Informative)
What about environment and climate variables? (Score:2)
It's very easy to proof that a processor can't work for so long. Just put it under midday sun in Rio de Janeiro(+100F), and you see your CPU goes to the CPU's heaven.
But we can also put it to work in alaska and we don't even need the coller :o)
Whatever, these tests are just like the others. Tom's test was prepared to see when the processor crashes, and the AMD test's was made so the processor survives for a long time. It's a matter of statistics.
A joke now:
The mathematics made his calculations and said tha 2.351 liters of water was enough to solve the problem
The physics drawed some schemes in the paper and said that 2.500 liters was enough to solve the problem
The engeneer loked up, stayed quiet some secondes and said that 4.000 liters would solve the problem The statistic saw the problem and aske the fireman, "How much water do you want to spend?"
And that's what have happened in both tests.
I don't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I would certainly like to see a ~20W Athlon (which I have heard about, can't say where) some day, but even if they don't get that low and if they do burn up with no thermal solution, I don't care...
If you run it without any thermal protection you should know better... Even a P100 needs some kind of cooling (albeit not as much as anything now-a-days), so if you're running without, tough luck... If you thermal solution fails, you better have made sure in advance that the chip was under warranty for such things or that your thermal solution provider had a warranty in case their product failed or perhaps never works in the 1st place. I hope the Tyan Tiger + AthlonXP 1800+ MPs come down in price and then I plan to buy them and have a nice SMP system, and I could care less if it runs kind of hot, as long as it does what it's supposed to do and as long as the heatsink/fan/whatever I have does what it's supposed to do.
Now if when we eventually have fiber optic processors &/or quantum computers in people's homes and they burn themselves up, yeah then that'd bug me, but face it metal conducts, it's gonna heat up, plain and simple.
And if you totally disagree with me, that's kewl, I don't mind, you're free to care about such things if you want, I just felt like saying it doesn't seem to be that critical of an issue to me.
Well I've toasted a Athlon 1.4 Ghz in about 5 secs (Score:3, Informative)
Let me assure you that the Athlon 1.4 Ghz is more than capable of destroying itself within 5 seconds if it doesn't have adequate cooling.
I am now Aus$400 poorer and a little more careful.
Always looked to me like the heatsink compound... (Score:5, Interesting)
No fan vs. no heatsink (Score:2, Interesting)
A different thing (rather more likey) is the fan stopping while the heatsink remains on the CPU. This has happened to me once, with an Athlon @ 1GHz, when a cable got stuck in the fan (whoever designed those Titan Majesty coolers didn't remember there are cables inside the case). After about 1 minute the motherboard started beeping and the system froze (I don't know if it this was a safety measure taken by the board - an Asus A7Pro - or a consequence of some error). I turned the power off, pulled the cable from the fan, let it cool for a couple of minutes and turned it back on. It still beeped for a while (it was at about 90 C) but booted normally, and it's been working fine since.
Anyway, an appropriate heatsink is a requirement of the CPU, just like a proper electrical supply. If you feed a CPU 220 volts instead of 1.7, it probably won't last long either...
The reason the video is only 9 minutes (Score:2, Funny)
Motherboards can handle the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
So, given that, I'd rather have the better performing and cheaper Athlon system. The risk seems minimal and by the time time you pay slightly more for the Intel CPU, the Intel mobo, and the Intel Rambus RAM, you're paying a lot more. My personal opinion.
- Twid
Hold yer horses! (Score:2, Informative)
The processor that Tom Pabst had fried is an older model, using the T-Bird core. It is only fair to assume that the old Athlons didn't have this overheat protection built in (which becomes obvious for all of us who have fallen victim to those stupid rubber spacers on early heatsinks).
Cat Vs AMD 1.2 MP (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:foolish (Score:2)
Nobody has NO agenda. Tom needs people to go to his site to stay afloat and I for one wouldn't put it past him to fake someting like this in order to drum up interest (al la Dateline's rigging of their "independent" testing of the dangerous side-saddle gas tanks)
Re:foolish (Score:2)
The best independent data should always be taken with a grain of salt, not because you wouldn't trust the source, but because only one datapoint is not enough for verification.
/Janne
Re:.wmv? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yeah, like Apple hs anything to do with this (Score:2)
Your answer: Apple
Correct Answer: Soreson.
Correct Answer #2: Those who encode using Sorenson rather than a more free QT codec.
Re:Yeah, like Apple has anything to do with this (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, like Apple hs anything to do with this (Score:2)
Apple's answer: Sorenson
Sorenson's answer: Apple
Sorenson would be happy to make a Linux codec, but they done sold an exclusive license to Apple. So. Talk to Apple.
Re:just so you know (WRONG--OT) (Score:2)
Re:Blast it! (Score:2)
Re:Horseshit! (Score:3)
You actually thought that a k6 heatsink and fan would be enough for a 1.4G Athlon? Without thermal gel?? AND you make mistakes like these every couple of months??
Dude, go buy your machines from Dell or Compaq or somebody else before you burn down your house. You should also seriously consider having a trusted friend hide all the sharp objects in your house from you.
Love me, and I'll burn for you... (Score:2)
The SCO box had been going kind of erratic, killing the odd user process. This was bad because their entire business (four vet clinics, maybe 20-25 workstations) was running from it.
I couldn't touch the case bare-handed to get it out, it was too hot. I used some convenient price lists as insulators to get the (still running) box out far enough to circulate air around it, at which point I aimed a fan-heater (set at blow-only-no-heat). After a few minutes, it was cool enough to touch, albeit briefly, so I unbolted the lid and angled the blower at the PSU. This kept it happy (ie no more dead processes) until after closing time about nine hours later, when the clinic's director replaced the PSU.
The box kept running flawlessly for some months until they replaced the P-II-350 SCO box using 32M of RAM and about 800M of its 2GB hard disk for Telnet clients with a monster multi-CPU gigabytes-of-RAM acres-of-disk Terminal Server box supporting similarly high-grunt Win2k client boxen, each doing nothing more than an X server would be.
Ah, you've seen Top Secret! (Score:2)
Mind you, the no-heatsink test does smack of running a half-track into a passenger sedan.
Re:Thermal Death (Score:2)
Re:isn't it odd.. (Score:2)
Fortunately, AMD honored the warranty on the chip because I was using it in an "approved" configuration, and replaced it with a 1.2Ghz (!) chip for free. I'm not sure if Intel would do something like that (especially given their financial shape). But it has definitely made me a more loyal AMD customer, despite their debatable thermal issues.
-all dead homiez