Unmasking Mis-Labeled CPUs 157
Syniq writes "The folks at Tom's Hardware had an interesting story about a new free utility from Intel that checks the frequency of your processor to let you know if that PIII-500 is actually a PIII-500 or a PII-300 over-clocked and relabeled by the retailer to snag a little extra cash. An interesting story, but is this really all that common? Has anyone personally experienced this from an actual company (i.e. Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) and not from MrSmiley on Ebay?"
Re:Good news for overclockers! (Score:1)
For a production machine/server? Yeah, I'd use the real thing. For a home machine? OC a celery and sink the extra money into a great video card or bigger monitor. My machine has an extra cooler, and it's ROCK solid as win 98 machine can be. Has been running at 450 for almost a year.
Correction (Score:1)
I tell you..that guy is getting SO popular! When I first started buying from him, he was just another guy tryin to make a buck. Now look at him...he's got his own occasional spot on UF [userfriendly.org] and now a mention on Slashdot. Wonder what the slashdot effect does to one's sales! sigh...there goes buying from 'the little guys' ;)
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:4)
1-800-321-4044
While fraud is illegal in all 50 states, you may find it hard to get overburdened prosecuting attorney's to wave there "I care" sticks at these people.
-Joe
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
128 MB pc-100
Voodoo3 3000...
Okay, it plays acceptably... but in high traffic, it's 12-15fps, highly unplayable (me + 3 or 4 bots)...
time for a better fps... hmmmmmmm, 1gigahertz Athlon?
mmmm....
Re:Compaq fudging the adverstising.. (Score:1)
I don't see the similarity here. The current Celeron and Pentium II cores are identical with the exception of differences of FSB speed, some bus interface differences, and the added on-chip L2 cache of Celeron. Whereas a 486SX was inferior to a 486DX because of the lack of a math coprocessor, which necessitated software emulation of floating point ops.
So it's not similar to using a Celeron vs. Pentium II/III. First generation Celerons, however, did not include any L2 cache, which made them much slower, and perhaps a comparison would have made sense in that case.
Re:Sure it's illegal. (Score:1)
Most recently, with the Mustang, it's advertised at about 310 HP, but people who have bought them, and hooked them up to Dynos (after losing drag races), found out that most 99 Mustangs are putting out somewhere in the 270-285 HP range.
I know this is off topic, but many people are starting to use pressurized dyno rooms to get a denser air volume. This, in many cases, is where the difference really is. Keep in mind, the engine really did produce that much HP, just not on the street!
MICROCENTER, COLUMBUS OHIO USA (Score:1)
Re:Good news for overclockers! (Score:1)
But it DOES crash every now and them, right? So how can you be sure? I care too much about stability to overclock. I also care too much to run Win98. Celerons are so cheap, just buy two.
Ryan
Why not just cat /proc/cpuinfo ? (Score:1)
Re:CD Copy protection [ very off topic] (Score:2)
Basically, they do lots of standard fudging techniques (680 MB CDs, invalid TOC, etc), plus a few unique ones - unreadable tracks (tracks burned such that they don't conform to ISO spec, or tracks with bad checksums [similar to PlayStation]) that are checked at run time, or digital signatures/keys that checksum the entire CD in such a way that copies will always fail (how, I do not know).
Check out: GameCopyWorld (www.gamecopyworld.com) [gamecopyworld.com] for more info.
Standard disclaimers apply. (BTW, making image copies of CDs, even your backup copy, can take ages because of these protections [CD-ROM drive just grinds to a halt reading errors on a CD]).
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:2)
Of course, your system may have a heatsink/fan that's pretty much impossible to remove (with or without invalidating your warranty).
Also, the BIOS only reports what the jumpers on the motherboard set it to use. I had to underclock my PC to be able to install Win95 on my K6-2-450 due to a fun bug in Win95; the BIOS reported the processor as being a K6-233. Before you all flame me, the ONLY reason I installed Win95 was to be able to play Half-Life and use WorldCraft...
emachines does this often (Score:1)
I work at a major computer retailer and this is more common than you might think, even among the larger manufacturers. The most constant offender is emachines who just pops whatever processor they feel the need to inside a computer. I've had numerous complaints from customers who got k6-2's instead of celerons and emachines response is simply "We use whatever parts we have on hand (often refurbished I might add) and if we substitute parts its for equivelants only."
Beyond emachines, I do know that, according to intel, this is the reason they put in anti-overclocking measures (although I suspect thats a bunch of bunk). Intel has also quite a few times in the past put out utillities to discover what your cpu really is and then to assist you in reporting fraud to them.
Those bastards... (Score:1)
Watch out for *all* scumbags... (Score:2)
The part that is illegal is the vendor is making claims in advertising that are verifiably false. Unfortunately, they can write some fairly "sharp" things that are misleading, but not actually false.
The utility is definitely good for Intel, as it can provide them information that can allow them to pursue people that are overclocking or misreporting things. That can work for both good and for ill...
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
There's an AMD equivalent to the CPU identification application - it's actually better than the Intel one because it does Intel as well as AMD chips, in a lot more detail as I recall.
The downside is that I believe it is Win32 only.. but then isn't the Intel one? There is some source code made available.
Look here [amd.com] - this may require you to enter your email address as registration.
Q.
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
Sure it's illegal. (Score:2)
1) Getting the prosecutor to understand.
2) Getting the prosecutor to care.
It's a fairly clear-cut case of Fraud, at least in my opinion.
ripped off (Score:1)
The big players order chips months in advance and when they guestimate too optimistically they aree stuck with thousands of chips. They sell these to a chip broker who unloads them to the mail order places etc. If the broker is legit then you're ok, if they're not then the chips get marked up. I've seen a few and you can't tell if a chip has been remarked, they do a really good job. I have a copy of Office97 that looks perfect but it's a counterfeit.
It's a major problem
MrSmiley (slightly offtopic) (Score:5)
I guess we should be more careful when we make up those names.
Re:"actual companies"? (Score:2)
With as many things as customarily go wrong for me with computer upgrades, it's nice that this, of all things, went right.
Many dont have clues (Score:1)
Be Wary of Local Stores (Score:1)
1. Removing the print on 486's/Pentiums and reprinting them as the next model up. (They sadly got away with this 99.99% of the time - the systems were soak tested before delivery)
2. 66 Mhz Ram for 100 Mhz (again, got away with it all the time - how to YOU know your memory is 100Mhz??? V.Hard to tell. I left before the days for 100Mhz RAM, but I know someone that works there still)
3. For our own systems we had a hacked BIOS image that reported standard SIMMS as EDO, when they were just FPM.
4. Some HDD Manufacturers used to sell drives that had failed some QC test on the cheap. (I don't believe they do anymore). We used to have low level format utilities that would format a 2BG drive full of bad sectors into a 1.6GB drive. We would then sell them.
5. Got Mutsumi 6x cd-drives that reported themselves as 8x (no idea where they got those from.....)
6. Cheap N Nasty far east motherboards that had the ink removed and sold as Intel boards. (No offense - some of the best boards are made out there (Abit), but these were S*!t)
7. Usual fake Microsoft Mice. (These are VERY common) We got them in for 2 quid each, sold them for 16.
8. Sold OEM win95 licenses to anyone who wanted one (ie. without a new machine). Mind you, a lot of people do this.....
9. Fequently sold components that were knowingly stolen.
10. Faulty stock was found out to be faulty by selling it 3 times and if it was returned three times, then it was considered faulty.
You may think that is pretty bad, but it gets a whole lot worse. If a customer gave us a faulty machine to fix, and there was not any real problem (ie. Misconfiguration) then they would break the machine, and charge them for the component that was misconfigured. (eg. Couldn't get your CD-Rom to work under DOS madam? Im afraid it was broken. That will be 49.99 please) Their old CD-Drive was sold again in the following days.
I am ashamed to admit I ever worked for this place. I resigned after 2 Months when they asked me to break a single mothers machine that was in for repair when there was nothing wrong with it.
What gets me even more worked up is they fact that they got away with it. I quit over 3 years ago now, but they are still operating where I live (Edinburgh, Scotland) and have even moved to bigger premises to accomodate customer demand.
They guy who owns it made (in 1996) between 15 and 20K profit a week. As far as he was concerned it was a license to print money.
Please don't flame me for being nasty to local shops. I believe there are good local shops out there, and that they can get you a good deal. But be careful. VERY Careful.
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
It will only be able to categorically state the nature of the chip for AMD K6-3 chips and above (presumably Athlon) since it's only these chips which have embedded CPUID - There's no way of knowing with the older chips, as far as I know..
Q.
Off topic - but important.... (Score:1)
With local computer stores, word of mouth is usually enough to stop people going there for large purchases, and as I said, in the case of the place I worked, they did eventually collapse. The real worry would be if larger corporate manufacturers used the same tactics. It tends, however, to only be middle- and high management who think they can get away with this for any length of time. If a large mfr. tried this then a leafleting campaign would work, as long as the facts on the leaflet hold up in court, should things progress that far. As a British politician found out at the weekend, deception can only go so far.
It's up to us to make sure that people like that can't get away with it, and McLibel in the UK, and the M$ anti-trust case proves that it is possible to beat them.
Anyway, my $0.02 have run out so.....
l8rz,
Tc.
mislabelled cpus (Score:1)
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
Re:Sure it's illegal. (Score:1)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:4)
I'm not sure why, but there are an awful lot of really crooked people who run local PC sale/repair places -- it's as bad as trying to locate an honest mechanic. It's probably for the same reason; more people don't really understand either of 'em to any real depth.
I was in our scummy local place (needed an ethernet card Right Now) and I actually saw a PC being marketed as a 500 Mhz, and down the tag a bit it said "Clock Speed Increased for Maximum Performance". It made me sick 'cause I could see my folks dropping $2000 and getting screwed by these kind of scumballs.
Is there some kind of 800 number you can call to report this sort of thing? Hell, is it even against the law?
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Not really a problem (probably) (Score:2)
Of course, it'd take bastardy of a truly prodigious nature to take advantage of this; the third time you try it with a geek your name is probably mud, so you'd have to be very careful about whom you sold the dodgy systems to.
Of course, there's always the Apple manoeuvre; drop the speed by 50,000,000 Hz across the board.
What about AMD chips? (Score:3)
Also, I doubt that the Compaqs and Dells of the world misidentify what they're selling, but how many home users really buy from them? I bought from a web retailer who offered a competitive price and a good warranty, but I have very little information on the company itself. Maybe this is just as dumb as buying from eBay, but I'd like to think there's some kind of middle ground.
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:1)
I was one of 2 techs working there. I would always attempt to fix the problems that customers were having. The other tech usually replaced whatever hardware he couldn't figure out in 5 minutes with a new piece of Acer garbage. Sound Blaster Sound card doesn't work? Here's a new Acer that works fine! Bad blocks on your hard drive? Here's a brand new Maxtor!
Needless to say, that shop went out of business a year after I left. I was replaced with someone with 1/10 of my experience, since the owner made more money off of unexperineced employees. (Could charge the customer for their flub-ups.) They deserved to go out of business.
Any shop that's still open and their only source of income is h/w sales and repairs, probabbily isn't honest, since the market has changed such that you can't make a living off of h/w sales alone. You need to add some other sort of value to make it. I'm sure there are some mom and pop type computer shops around that are honest...I've just never found one. So watch out.
Waste of an article, both on Tom's and Slashdot (Score:1)
H. Oda!'s WCPUID [h-oda.com]
The Intel ID program is old news. WCPUID provides more information than just about the CPU and is not proprietary.
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:2)
Yes, they're etched, too, but that doesn't deterr a motivated overclocker. A little machine shop can peel the top few
Some companies were doing this with AMDs, too, IIRC. That was the bigger problem, since AMDs are pretty aggressively clocked at their rated speed.
I don't know if it's still done, but it used to be you could tell a remarked processor with a micrometer (they were about
-- I'm omnipotent, I just don't care.
There has been no change. (Score:2)
In another, a store was selling two identical K6-3 systems, both containing 400mhz processors, but labelling some as 400s and some as 450s. Plus, they were charging $70 more for the '450'.
I've also seen stores passing 66mhz SDRAM off for 100, and NON-PC-100 for PC-100. Some boards will run 66 well enough on a 100mhz bus (DFI, most MVP3 based, etc) and will sell those customers the slower memory at the faster price.
You don't even want me to get into the older horror stories, like the fellow who was substituting V chips and a manual clock tweak (in the customers old board) for a new 286. Or the woman who just couldn't sell a bunch of DX4-120 systems, so she stuck a sign reading 'Pentium 60 Closeout' and sold them fifty bucks cheaper than a REAL P60. This same woman just LOVED when the 5x86 came out; Now she could refit $20 DX2 MBs with 5x86-133's and truthfully label the computer as a '133mhz Pentium-Clone'.(Note the hyphen)
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
AMD Athlon Chips may outperform the Intel at FP, but I would have to say, in q3 my amd k6-2 450 sucks......
Re:Utility only works with Intel PIII (Score:1)
As far as the clock speed though, it simply reports what it's running at. If you overclock a 300mhz to 500mhz, it's gonna report 500mhz.
Intel Not Inside (Score:1)
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:1)
I worked at a Best Buy store (Score:5)
Re:Doesn't anyone remember the Packard Bell fiasco (Score:1)
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:1)
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
A physical tab would solve this (Score:2)
However, a *physcial* tab could be put on the chip along the lines of
500 450 400 350
etc. All tabs above the rated speed would be broken off, leaving the "true" speed identified.
Re:Nothing new... (Score:2)
If I remember, the V-20 was designed for a 16MHz clock, but I may be wrong!
been there (Score:1)
Dustin Tenney
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:2)
You are dealing with obsolete information. This may have been true of the K6 family and earlier, but the Athlon's FPU beats the Pentium III convincingly and across the board even for pure numerical calculation. The question really is, in the long run can AMD stay ahead since they have considerably smaller resources than Intel. This will become especially difficult for AMD once the Itanium ships, because it looks like AMD has a long road ahead to build a competitive 64 bit architecture. Luckily for AMD in the short run it will be quite a while before the Itanium is much of a factor due to costs and availability of software that will take advantage of it.
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:1)
It's uncool, but appears legal.
People need to be smarter.. or maybe the BIOS does (Score:2)
This could be arguing apples and oranges, but I think what I'm really trying to say is that people need to know a little more about what they buy. That is why the magazine Consumer Reports [consumerreports.com] exists.
But what about those situations where the chip has been overclocked and there is no fine print? Maybe it is time that BIOS chips reported the CPU configuration. It seems that overclocking has gotten much more exposure in the last few years, and it seems that a new chipset comes out for each new processor, so why not create a hook in the chipset (for the BIOSs' sake) that reports what the chip should be running at and what it is running at? In the startup screen of your computer, report if the machine is running above it's spec'd speed. It'd be a benefit to the hackers out there who like to overclock because they can see what they've achieved, and it would be informative to the consumer because they could see that their machine is the correct chip. If Intel can write a program to detect their CPU configurations, then this should be a snap.
I guess the big thing is that Intel has been cracking down on overclockers for some time new because (supposedly) of the abuses by the resellers overclocking and repackaging. This at least would bring to the surface situations which might normally be hidden without extra software. Maybe it'll hinder Intel's efforts to block overclocking? Who knows.
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Re: Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:3)
I don't see the problem. A computer store over-clocked a PC to squeeze out every little bit of speed. Further, it labled the product as having had its clock speed increased.
Had the computer store not let the consumer know that the chip had been over-clocked, I can see why the dealer might be walking the line. But there was full disclosure.
Light overclocking is a relatively safe way of getting a few more cycles out of your processor. Don't flame a store just because they overclock.
InitZero
Big companies aren't going to use remarked CPU's.. (Score:1)
Re:Sure it's illegal. (Score:1)
Most recently, with the Mustang, it's advertised at about 310 HP, but people who have bought them, and hooked them up to Dynos (after losing drag races), found out that most 99 Mustangs are putting out somewhere in the 270-285 HP range.
Ford is doing nothing about it, because it's an engine defect, and replacing the engine is about a $8000/car proposition.
Glad I bought German!
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
As other have guessed, I don't want to remove the heatsink for fear of voiding my warranty. I probably spent about $100 for the three-year warranty (not its actual cost, but as compared with buying from another retailer), so I'd feel silly voiding it within the first couple of months. I've had enough bad luck with other systems that having a warranty makes a big difference to me.
Yet Another Story: Bogus 386SX-20 (Score:1)
I have a motherboard I salvaged from a friend's junkpile that's a bogus 386SX-20 system. The motherboard has "386-20Mhz" silkscreened onto the board, and all the chips (bios, etc) have a little "20Mhz" stamped onto them. But the CPU itself is a surface-mount 386SX-16 (clearly marked as 16), and there's a hand-soldered 20Mhz crystal on the board (messy solder job, I might add).
I'm not sure if this machine was sold under dubious circumstances... for all I know it may have been sold honestly as a "souped up" CPU. But I seriously doubt it...
I think it's pretty cool, so I keep it around. One of these days, I'm going to try to pop a 25Mhz crystal in there.
Bigger problem is (was?) overseas. (Score:1)
Re:Aww crap. (Score:1)
Software solution is better. (Score:1)
This is an good idea but what if a retail store snaps them all off and then says to the buyer that they were damaged during shipping?
Besides a software solution is better because its easier for a user to install and run software rather than unplug all of the the computer, open up the case, find the cpu...
Re:Not all locals are scumbags...... (Score:1)
I took up the post because of their good reviews in the UK computer press. Once I started with them I realised that the reason they got the good reviews was that the review machines were produced on a totally different production line to those sold to the public. The casing was of a far superior quality, and the disk cabling was tied up and routed together. The publicly sold machines were shoddy by comparison - for example I managed to damage a soundcard on removing a cover because the loose cabling got caught in the case.
They had a problem with disk caches on Windows98 machines where the ATX powerdown would cause the drive to power off prior to a cache flush, causing lost data. They knew of the fix for this, but didn't bother to contact customers until a fault was reported. What b*st*rds!
I also had a customer ring up and complain that the NICs we had supplied them with did not work, and would I supply Windows NT drivers for them. No-one in the factory could tell me what type of card they were sold, and the serial number did not match. I just emailed them every NIC driver I could find. Even Emailing them was difficult, as the access to outgoing internet mail was so contrived, mainly by the managing director being so bloody ignorant on security.
They also treated the customers like dirt - once they had the money they didn't want to know. I was told off by the boss for taking too long to resolve a problem - despite the fact that the customer was satisified when all was working.
There were other aspects of the position as well, such as me being asked to steal support contracts from my past employer to gain customer details, and used goods being passed on as brand-new.
I didn't bother to turn up after 2 days. Unfortunatley they are still in business. Email me if you want to know their name!
A LOT of people... (Score:1)
How many "typical" users ever open up their computer? Of those who do, how many pull the heat sink off the CPU? If they do open it up for a look, it'll probably be a couple of years down the road when they are about to upgrade the CPU, at which point it'll be more hassle than it's worth to try to track down the original seller.
I overclock my own CPU's by 20% to 30% all the time. It's as simple as changing a couple of jumpers on the MB usually, and it's reliable as long as you have a good heat sink and fan. The only drawback is the risk of reducing the life expectancy of the processor (which is still an order of magnitude greater than their useful lifespan in today's economy anyway). If a retailer did it, I think he'd be able to get away for years before someone called him on the carpet. Even then, chances are the dealer could weasel out of it by claiming the parts were mislabled, or that he had included the "enhanced clock speed" somewhere in the fine print.
After all, if the sign says "500MHz", and the processor is actually running at 500MHz, then the dealer is sort of telling the truth...
Re:Why would anyone risk their ass for this? (Score:1)
Re:A physical tab would solve this (Score:2)
Re:Legality [off topic] (Score:1)
As if CDs had a proper copyprotection scheme, and even if they did, wouldn't hold.
[I think they actually have one]
--
when everyone gives everything,
Re:Sure it's illegal. (Score:1)
Good information (Score:2)
Re:Utility only works with Intel PIII (Score:1)
Eventually, however, I feel certain that all manufacturers will end up doing something similar. And, no doubt, someone will make an OpenSource version available, when there are enough people with CPU's who can use the program to motivate someone to write one.
Yes, it happens (Score:2)
Processors are remarked and overclocked; but the culprit usually isn't the local mom-and-pop computer store, but their supplier. There are many cpu-selling wholesalers and middlemen in the world. Some buy trays of Intel OEM CPUs and re-sell them. Or they buy them from somebody else and then re-sell them. Usually, these folks are working on tight margins, well below ten percent. Many local computer stores use these people as a source of supply, and many get burned. Usually, the CPU gets passed on to the consumer, it works as advertised, and that's the end of it.
On the other hand, I've seen some incredibly egregious examples. When Pentium-166's were current, it was almost impossible to buy a legit one for a while. People were buying 133's, and adding $100 to the price by calling them 166's. An educated eye could tell the difference, but you really had to know what you were looking for.
It hasn't been as bad during the PII-PIII-Celeron era; the clock-locking has helped, especially in the US. But there are ways to defeat it, and since you can make upwards of $100 doing so, it's worth some effort.
For example, I once bought two Intel Retail Boxed PII-400 CPUs from my local mom-and-pop shop. Usually I would go through authorized channels, but I didn't have time, and buying the retail boxed versions is fairly safe. But not completely. When I went to build the systems using these CPUs, I noticed that the two boxes had slightly different shades of purple. Upon further examination, I found that one was marked "100 MHz Sustem Bus", complete with misspelling. There were also slight differences in some typefaces. Clearly, one was a fake. Since I was a regular customer, I simply returned it to the dealer, and they exchanged it for me without hesitation. But it helped that I caught it before opening the box; if I had only bought one CPU, I might not have noticed.
So, yeah, I buy all my CPU's either from a trusted dealer where they know me, or from name-brand channels. No, you won't get re-marked CPUs from Dell or Gateway, nor from authorized wholesalers like Tech Data. If you buy retail boxed, you're probably safe with the larger mail-order houses like CDW or warehouse.com who have relationships with the manufacturers. But as you slide into the gray market, the odds begin to turn against you.
Here's a page that details some re-marking schemes. [pro-desk.com] Slightly out of date, but interesting nonetheless.Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:1)
While changing the cpuid is difficult, modifying the BIOS to display whatever CPU you want on bootup can be done very easily.
The best way to identify the CPU is thru the cpuid code, that resides on the newest-flashed BIOS, the fleshly-installed OS and the just-compiled open-source cpu probing programs.
Motif: you can only trust yourself when it comes to hardware purchase. Always reflash your motherboard BIOS at least once.
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:2)
However, the K6-2 is also a previous generation, the K6-3 is a little more competitive in floating point and overall performance to the Celeron and Pentium II/III than the K6-2 and original K6 were. The K6-2 is, on the other hand usually significantly cheaper than even Celerons. The Athlon was just the first time in a long time that AMD has actually convincingly beat Intel in flat out performance. In price/performance, AMD has always been very competitive.
Local shops aren't all bad... (Score:2)
One of the first times I bought parts via mailorder, I did get burned... I got a 486 Moboard with fake cache RAM on it. This was a scam going around years ago, when cache RAM was soldered onto the board. They would take 8K (or something) ram chips, solder them onto the board, then hack the BIOS to make it look like there was more (I forget how much cache was usual back in those days... 64K? 32K?). Needless to say, the system locked hard very often. Eventually, I pinned down the problem when I started getting internal errors from GCC while recompiling the Linux kernel.
Local places, if they do rip you off, are at least in arm's reach. You can go to the attorney general of your state and hope they'll take action. You could even take them to small claims court. You could warn your local Better Business Burea about them. Action against a company that's in another state is a lot harder.
And, finally, you get what you pay for... my local place does charge higher rates than the web vendors... but you know they've been around, and that they will be around in the future...
Dont Make Generalizations (Score:1)
clone overclockers (Score:1)
Re:buy Dell, they "underclock!" (Score:1)
Adjusting your order without asking, or adjusting price
(/sarchasm)
Overclocked Cyrix (Score:1)
At work we found that one of the computers was a Cyrix 166 (actual mhz speed) that was running at 200mhz. We noticed the problem when the computer started to crash very often. I put my hand on the CPU and got burnt by it! The poor thing was totally fried, I now have it as a paperweight.
Another batch of systems from the same vendor had power supplies that fried the motherboard and memory. The 5 volt line was putting out 6 volts!
We now exclusivly use Dell systems. They are well built and good quality IMO.
Not Only Processors! (Score:1)
Zenon's now out of business and I don't really want to spend my time pursueing a court settlement. I've done my best to warn people about Zenon. In the future, it's going to be self-built computers.
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
:)
Re:buy Dell, they "underclock!" (Score:1)
Re:ANother reason.... (Score:1)
Seems to me that this is a bonus for Intel rather than AMD. Something is actually being done by Intel to help their customers (damn that's strange) aviod fraud.
Fraud don't respect you and it don't respect brand names.
Testing Intel and non-Intel CPUs (Score:1)
Re:Doesn't anyone remember the Packard Bell fiasco (Score:2)
Either way, my Packard Bell 75 would only overclock to 90. At even 100 Mhz it would barely post...
Re:Legality (Score:1)
So, you can freely pop open PCs, and remove and change parts, and your warranty won't change, except that it's only valid on the original parts, and of course they aren't liable for your mistakes.
But, if you buy a system, break the 'do not open' sticker, swap the video card for a TNT2, and a few months later the RAM dies but not because of you, the company has to replace that RAM.
Re:identifying an athlon? (Score:2)
If the CPU is square shaped and fits into a socket on the motherboard, it's a K-6... If the CPU is in a big black box and plugs into a slot in the motherboard, that's an Athlon.
That's all assuming that they're AMD chips, but that's not too hard to verify.
Utility only works with Intel PIII (Score:1)
Good news for overclockers! (Score:2)
Anything that makes it easy to detect the fraud will mean that it's harder for Intel to have a leg to stand on for preventing overclocking of there chips. After all it's easy to detect fraud, right?
Call me silly, but I took great pleasure in spending on other things the $400 I saved not buying a 450mhz PII and overclocking a Celeron 300 instead
Instances (Score:1)
According to our of our suppliers (an actual manufacturer, not just an OEM,) Intel was cracking down on a some 'big' pac-rim companies that were doing this - buying P75's wholesale, and relabeling them... they did such a good job that Intel themselves couldn't tell.. they had to re-certify the chip... (and this is why all of the newer chips have it internally, to prevent this from happening again..)
Why would anyone risk their ass for this? (Score:1)
Call me crazy... (Score:1)
It happened to me (Score:3)
"actual companies"? (Score:3)
I, personally, have never bought a prebuilt system. (neither have I ever owned an Intel processor). I get my parts from local hole-in-the-wall component stores which may be shadier than they look. I still wonder what kind of K6 I have in this system. Its supposed to be a 200, but the old K6's were very easy to relabel, so it might be a 166. I guess it doesn't much matter. I have run it at 166-233 without any troubles, but I do wonder.
Someone like Dell or Gateway would never try relabelling. If anyone ever found out, the company would lose all credibility with their customers and their market would completely dry up. Its the local companies, which often come and go quite quickly, which may be interested in some quick money and not too concerned about reputation.
And I suppose its nice for Intel to provide this, but its really for them and not us. If the customer is willing to pay the huge premium that Intel charges for their high-end chips, than Intel really wants to see that money. That is where they make the real money...the massive margin on their current top-of-the-line.
out of things to mutter,
--Lenny
This practice has been going on for while... (Score:1)
Worked at computer store (Score:1)
Earlier this year, I was upgrading my boss' system (I now work at a cybercafe) and lo and behold, another remaked 233 sold as a 300. I think it was pretty common with the PII 300s
-Ross
Re:Don't overlook the local scumbags (Score:1)
Moral: If the shop has been around a while, and you hear good things about it, Then go there. Don't trust any "new" shops, unless you really know your stuff. But of course, all
Steven Rostedt
Doesn't anyone remember the Packard Bell fiasco? (Score:1)
[somewhat OT] re: Pricewatch (Score:2)
For those who mentioned getting bad hardware because they bought the cheapest stuff they could find on Pricewatch [pricewatch.com], there's another site you should look at before you decide to where to buy. Check out Reseller Ratings [resellerratings.com] to find out how lots of electronic retailers are rated by their customers. When I was shopping for PC parts a couple months ago, I went back and forth between these two sites extensively to find the best place to buy, and I didn't have any problems with my purchases (yet) even though I ended up buying hardware from 7 or 8 different sites. They list an absolute ranking for each site in several categories, and also display any submitted comments in case you're more interested in anecdotal rankings of the sites.
I should point out that I'm not affiliated with either site, I've just been happy with the information found there. Your experiences may vary (and I'm sure I'll hear about it below :).
Legality (Score:2)
The reason Dell and Gateway can't let you *totally* configure your system (meaning, I want this video card, not any of the ones you guys offer) is because they are required by law to sell you a working product. Otherwise, the corporation is subject to a false-advertising lawsuit.
So, if Dell and Gateway and Compaq are overclocking their CPUs, they had better watch out when the thing starts crashing and the CPU fails much sooner than its MTBF.
On the other hand, if you buy a CPU, and place it on your mobo that you bought from a mobo manufacturer, why should it be illegal to overclock it? Yes, I might void my warranty, but it's my property - I should be able to change it. Is it illegal to hack at my Playstation or something similar to make it faster? I don't think so - I bought the object, I should be able to change it, granted I understand the consequence of losing my warranty.
Guy Smiley does not equal Mr. Smiley (Score:2)
Not all locals are scumbags...... (Score:2)
I just thought I'd stick up for the honest small retailers (or their even smaller-fry employees) that could be tarred by a broad brush here.
On top of this, I'm from the UK, I don't know if the US system is any different though.....
l8rz,
Tc.
CD Copy protection [ very off topic] (Score:2)
[I think they actually have one]
Some CD-ROM's have copy protection schemes. This is especially common with game console CD-ROMs like the Sega Saturn. Even so, this is fairly weak since most CD readers can make a direct digital copy of any readable CD, which you can then write to a CD-R. I don't know of any audio cd's that have copy protection, although you need to be able to rip the digital samples off the CD (some CD readers used to interface directly with the sound card).
In the end CD audio copy protection is a moot point, since most CD audio is made into MP3s and if one can play a CD on a computer one can make an MP3.
DVD copy protection is a bit more clever, but they also have the problem that anything that can be displayed on a computer can be converted into another digital form.
--
Re:What about AMD chips? (Score:2)
Aww crap. (Score:3)