Does Athlon 64 have the same thermal protection safety as Pentium CPU's now?!!

[Dance123]

Hi,

The main reason I have always bought a Pentium instead of an AMD processor is because Pentium CPU's have thermal protection build into there core (+ thermal throttle) which was always being mentioned as the safest protection in case anything goes wrong.

But how is this with the Athlon XP or 64?! I remember articles mentioning that AMD didn't have thermal protection build into the core (I believe there was even a test on Tomshardware where an AMD CPU caught fire because of overheating). Then I remember that Asus came with a mobo that had C.O.P. or something, which meant that the thermal protection was on the motherboard, but many pointed out that this still wasn't completely as safe as the Intel solution of having it directly into the core for maximum safety!

Now, this is info of some time ago (and maybe not all correct), but how are things today?! Like, do the Athlon XP or perhaps better the 64 have thermal protection build into the core of this chip just like the Intel CPU's or does Intel still have a safer thermal protection. How is that with the Athlon XP and 64?! Is this different between the XP and 64 by the way, as I believe it was the XP that didn't have the same level of thermal protection and what the model that caught fire in that Tomshardware test if I remember right.

PS: it's been a while I have been shopping for a new PC. If the AMD's have the same thermal protection as the Intel's, should I go XP or 64. Is the 64 the better one, cause with Intel the Prescott isn't apparently better then the Northwood and it gets hotter I believe, so a newer model isn't always better apparently. How is that with Athlon XP vs 64?!

I really hope people with the right knowledge can clarify all the above! Thanks in advance!!

 

[mjuarez]

Well, that Tom's Hardware article you mention is pretty old, I'd say around 2000. AMD CPU's don't do that any longer, and most new ones (all Opterons and Athlon64s) have on-die termal throttling. AMD calls it Cool 'n Quiet. From what I've seen, AMD CPUs consume much less power at idle and under load than even Northwood CPUs, not to mention Prescott.

I'd recommend you get yourself an Athlon64, either 754-pins or 939-pins. Even a 3400+ model will beat every Intel processor in existence, including some much more expensive ones. Take a look here, for AnandTech's review on the subject. It even beats a Pentium4 3.4Ghz Extreme Edition, which costs almost $1,000. The Athlon64 3400+ is just $300 on the street.

Besides, you also have 64-bits and NX-bit protection (WindowsXP 64 is coming out in a few months, and NX-bit protection prevents buffer-overflow viruses from executing in your system, with XP Service Pack 2). None of Intel's Pentium4 chips currently offer any of this, and they won't offer it for at least another 6 months. And then, they'll use even more power than today, forcing you to fork over for a much more expensive PSU. Here's a look at comparative power consumption for Pentium4 and Athlon64.

Hope that helped.

Marcos

 

[InlineFive]

Well, I know Cool 'n Quiet is actually a user enabled feature for general thermal throttling. This allows the processor to slow itself down when not doing anything strenous to conserve electricity and reduce heat output. Once you startup something like a game it will rev up to full speed again.

As for actual thermal protection I know they will shutdown if overheating. But I don't know if they underclock like Pentiums do.

 

[Dance123]

So if I understand it right the Athlon 64 has thermal protect build into the core just like Pentium always had? When did they implement this cause I've never read anything about that, I mean I don't think the Athlon XP has it because the Tomshardware test was done with an XP if I remember correctly. OK, I know the test is old and it was under extreme conditions, but nevertheless the test made its point that at that point the Athlon wasn't completely safe in an "if everything else fails, the CPU will safe itself" kinda way. So how and when did AMD start to implement this in there CPU's?! You're not referring to Asus COP or whatever they called it, are you?!

Can anybody please give more info about the thermal protection evolution in the AMD CPU's and compared with the Intel protection cause I am still very much in doubt about this! Thanks!!

 

[Dance123]

Nobody who can give more info about this?!

 

[Dman877]

It's not really an issue since most mobo's have an option to turn the cpu off at a certain temperature. The toms article you refer to was using a tbird on a mobo with that feature turned off. When they ripped the heatsink off, the proc went to 400C in less then a second! But seriously, you really don't have to worry about it if you set the bios to power down at 70 or 75C or whatever.

 

[Jalf]

When did they implement it? As soon as possible after that article at Toms...

Although with the Athlon XP's, it was just a simple "shut down/reboot if it gets too hot", whereas the Pentium 4 had thermal throttlin to just slow down instead of rebooting.

The Athlon 64's can handle things a lot better. They also generate far less heat than a Pentium 4, so there's less cause to worry...
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