Originally posted by: Zap
The VIA C3 with the Ezra core wouldn't fry without a heatsink. In fact VIA even put out a video claiming they had one (800MHz Ezra) running for many hours without a heatsink at all in a room set to 22ºC. Also, I've run an overclocked P3 Coppermine without a heatsink. A friend accidentally knocked the computer over, and unknown to me the CPU heatsink/fan fell off. I turned on the machine to make sure it was okay and it booted into Windows. Left it for ½ hour, came back and it was locked. Popped the side off and found the HSF sitting on the bottom of the case. Put it back on and the system was good to go again. I've also seen computers come in at work (repair shop) that were P4 setups with broken heatsink brackets so the heatsink either fell off or was dangling. No permanent harm done. Athlon setups, OTOH...
Link to the VIA video "Beat the Heat"
The Via C3 core is a piece of cr@p.
The Dothan core is, clock for clock, significantly faster than either the P4 Northwood or Prescott.
As has been said before, this is not without a fan, this is
without a heatsink!
Also, if you read down they go on to explain that they got it up to 800 MHz @ 0.95V without a heatsink, and 1 GHz @ 1V (80C) with no heatsink and no insability (although that is quite hot).
Then, they slapped a copper Heatsink on it and ran it at 1.7 Ghz @ 1.35V effortlessly (and fanless).
Zebo earlier mentioned earlier that a mobile Barton can go 600 MHz without a fan - this one goes 1.7 Ghz and has higher IPC!
This is extremely impressive - Prescott would die in any of these situations (or at least throttle and become inoperably slow). Northwood can't do this, and neither can Barton or A64; not even mobile Barton can run close to this cool.