AMD overheat protection?

[vie2233hil]

Hello,

Do the latest Athlon chips have an overheat protection like Intel chips? What happens if CPU overheats?
Does it shutdown, decrease speed, motherboard shutdowns it or it's damaged?

Thanks

 

[mjuarez]

The latest Athlon64 and Opterons have "Cool and Quiet" technology, which is basically marketing-speak for thermal throttling. If the CPU detects there's no need for processing power, it falls back into a slower mode (usually 1.5Ghz or 1.0Ghz). It also does this if it detects the temperature is too high (not that that's a problem with recent Athlon64s and Opterons)

Basically, I think everybody is still scared because of that Tom's Hardware video of an Athlon64 melting itself to death. People, that was over three years ago! Yes, those Athlons ran really hot, but Prescott beats that by a mile today (recent Prescotts dissipate almost 110W of power, under normal use). Athlon64 and Opteron these days have absolutely no heat problems. If the chip ever gets too hot, it will start to fall down to a slower speed, until it either reaches a normal temperature, or until it shuts down.

Do a Google on "AMD Cool and Quiet". There's a lot of people talking about it on message boards.

Marcos

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yes, all AMD CPUs have on-die temp sensors now, and many boards read the die temp and have clock throttling and/or overheat protection features available in the bios settings. I have tested the overheat protection feature with a 1700+ t-bred in a Soltek SL-75MRN-L and it worked flawlessly. I attempted to boot without a cooler mounted and the fans barely budged before it shut off, subsequent attempts resulted in no response. I replaced the cooler and the system booted up normally.

The days of AMD CPUs suffering catastrophic damge because of failing CPU fans, forgetting to plug it in, or even turning the system on with no cooler, such as Tom's demonstrated back in a day are gone. Provided of course, that the board you choose supports the features, and most do now.