Author: Chritopher A. Morgan
Date: 16:47:58 04/22/02
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On April 22, 2002 at 16:34:33, john rice wrote: >"the 2400 will be even more susceptible to fire". LOL, I have never heard of an >AMD processor causing a fire. If that was the case, there would be major recalls >of AMD processor based computer systems. Thousands of lawsuits for wrongful >death, destruction of property and who know's what else. AMD would go under in a >matter of months. >Jr Don’t you love it when someone rants, and he hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. A few selected paragraphs from an article on Tom’s Hardware site follow. AMD was so concerned they invited people from Tom’s Hardware to their labs where AMD tried to come up with a solution to their processors burning up if the heat sink comes off. Download the video if you want to watch the processor burn up. Material from site follows: Test-CPU number three is AMD's Athlon 1400 processor, which comes equipped with the 'Thunderbird' core that was introduced in June 2000. The removal of the heat sink proves to be fatal. In less than a second Athlon 1400 dies the heat death. It doesn't take long and the core reaches a temperature of extremely hefty 370 degrees Celsius / 698 degrees Fahrenheit. If the user of the Athlon system doesn't turn off his box immediately, the motherboard will be destroyed too. There's even the risk of a fire. AMD did not bless the Thunderbird core with ANY thermal protection whatsoever. If the heat sink should come off, the owner is facing a significant financial loss. He requires a new processor and possibly a new motherboard too. Athlon (Thunderbird) owners should make sure that the processor heat sink in their system is fixed 100% safely. The fact that the vast majority of heat sinks is only fixed to the little notches of SocketA doesn't help. We have seen several occasions when those notches finally broke under the weight of the heat sink Test Lab Video Shows Deficits Of AMD Processors The thermal testing was conducted in our Munich lab and done very carefully. We documented the whole test on video, because we considered it interesting for you to see how well Pentium 4 handles the heat sink removal and how nasty Thunderbird goes up in smoke. We never expected Palomino to die as well and we are glad that we taped this test, because we don't enjoy frying CPUs. It cannot be denied that Intel is offering the by far better solution when it comes to thermal management. Pentium 4 dealt with the thermal disaster in an absolutely perfect manner. No data loss and no hardware damage is more than most of us would expect. Even Pentium III with its two-year old 'Coppermine' core handled the situation admirably. The system may have crashed, but the hardware survived. AMD needs to do more work. Both Athlon-processors, the new one as well as the old one, died within fractions of a second. Our test scenario is far from outlandish - it happens all of the time. We recommend that every owner of an Athlon or Duron processor should check the seat of its processor heat sink and the proper operation of the heat sink fan on an at least monthly basis. Otherwise you are indeed facing a processor and a motherboard that goes up in smoke. If you want to experience the Athlon-smoke clouds or the clock throttling of Pentium 4, we recommend you download our video. It runs approximately 2:20 minutes. Link: http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/index.html Christopher >On April 22, 2002 at 12:08:10, Chritopher A. Morgan wrote: > >>The Athlon XP 2100 is available now (1.73 GHz). Tigerdirect.com has a fairly >>good XP 2100 system without monitor for $1,050. According to Tom’s Hardware >>site the Athlon XP 2400 (1.918 GHz) should be released this month, April. There >>is no info on the AMD site re the 2400 that I could find. >> >>I know little about hardware, other than what I have picked up over the last 15 >>years using PCs and looking at performance tests on various sites. I only >>upgrade every 24-30 months or so, and always get the latest and best available >>when I do upgrade. My current computer is Athlon 750 bought in December 2000. >>I plan to go with AMD again, the XP 2100 or XP 2400. >> >>For those that know much more than I do, should I wait for the 2400? I don’t >>mind paying an extra $300-$500 for the 2400, nor waiting a month or two. I know >>there is a real heat problem with this series of AMD processors, and the 2400 >>will be even more susceptible to fire than the 2100. I wonder if the >>performance increase, 190 MHz, is worth it? >> >>A related question. The Tigerdirect.com machine comes with MS XP Home edition. >>I use my computer heavily in work - spreadsheets, tax programs, word processing, >>Internet, etc. in addition to computer chess, of course. For an additional $100 >>I can get MS XP Pro edition installed. Should I do so? I’d almost rather stick >>with WIN 98 so I can still use my DOS programs, but maybe I can partition MS XP >>so I have a DOS partition? I understand I can’t run DOS programs in MS XP? >> >>Thanks for any advice!! >> >>Christopher
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