physical core damage causing weird dips in performance?

[OverDose]

I had wrote a thread earlier about my processor automatically throttling down to benchmark specs of a 1ghz athlon but it's a 1.2ghz AXIA stepping 266fsb tbird, swapped the motherboard with shuttle ak31 r3.1, 512mb of pc2100 ddr, 300w enlight power supply and the problem seemed to clear up, ran it with cpuburn for 12 hours, 100% stable @ 1.33ghz and benching right on par with sandra.

Then tonight the plague came back, way low benchmark scores and an obvious dip in performance, MP3s decoding a bit choppy etc

So I removed the processor to take a closer look, it appears whoever owned this processor originally thought it would be cool to smash it with the heatsink leaving cracks and what looks like eroded rock all around outside of the core surface, there's even a small chunk missing on one corner, touch the heatsink with your hand and you hear a nice crunch, yet it still runs stable at it's suffered performance, is it safe to say the processor is malfunctioning and should definately be replaced to remedy this problem after all?

I have a thermaltake 6cu+ w/ AS2 and the 7000rpm fan on it and with the case opens it *STILL* idles @ 125 degrees F !?!?

 

[User5412]

WOw!!!

And its still working?! Get a shim dude!

 

[OverDose]

no DUDE, I recieved the processor like this, it's used, I sir am not a moron

but you didn't answer my question, even though it's working does my sceneario with slowdown seem possible?

and shims are un-neccesary if you don't SLIDE the heatsink over the core

 

[Wind]

<< but you didn't answer my question, even though it's working does my sceneario with slowdown seem possible? >>


With a crack core...ur scenario is possible. It might continue to drop...until its dead.



<< and shims are un-neccesary if you don't SLIDE the heatsink over the core >>


True.