Was the P4 an 'engineering failure'?

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
thank you for clarifying... can you tell me than what would be the term for the two definitions I gave?
management failure? product failure? marketing failure?

Originally posted by: taltamir
Does engineering fail mean:
1. Engineers failed to design it properly.
2. Engineers designed it properly, but management made changes to it and caused it to become a failed design.

#1 is close to being "engineering failure" but it is overly open-ended due to the use of the word "properly". Specifically I mean "properly" with respect to whose authority?

Marketing may think the product should have been designed as xyz in order for it to have been designed "properly". Doesn't mean it is an engineering failure if it is not designed as xyz.

Engineering failure merely means the resultant product as designed and specified by the engineers (which will include a built-in fail-rate already) fails to meet the stated design goals and specifications to the sampling statistics which were included in the specifications.

XBOX for example, you call it an engineering failure but I am willing to bet it was a calculated risk by management to sell the XBOX as engineered with its given in-field fail rate. Does not mean anyone in the loop failed, not engineering, not marketing, etc, just means customers were intentionally abused a little (like MIR if you think about it) by the company's decision makers all in the name of squeezing out a bit of higher gross margins for the company.

Your #2 above falls into this category a little...if your boss changed your product but you then characterized it and adequately communicated the resultant change in the product's specifications then it is not an engineering failure and it is also not a management failure, the product simply does exactly as it was engineered to do. You might not like what it was engineered to do, but a rose by any other name is still a rose.

To truly have an engineering failure the engineers would have to design a product, complete with operational specification including statistics relating to fail-rates in the field, etc, and then the resultant unaltered unrevised product would have to fail to meet those engineering stated specifications when the sampling size is properly accounted for.

Not meeting customer expectations does not mean engineering failed to design the product. Your XBOX experience is not a failure of engineering, it is a success of marketing. They got you to buy something based on you having over inflated expectations, not their fault you were so willing to assume you were buying a product with specifications xyz when really the product was engineered and manufactured to have specifications abc.

(you wanted a product at time-zero store purchase, the XBOX, and you wanted it to function in the capacity for a duration of time for which statistically you should not have expected it to...but these lifetime specifications were withheld from you, this is a failure of your government by not regulating better disclosure of the marketing teams when they make their advertisements and set your expectations regarding the specifications of the product you bought)

 

[MODEL3]

I guess, that the responsibilities, Intel Engineers have,
are more than the responsibilities, of a plain engineer, or a student of engineering, right?

They are on a completely different level!

I mean that, in addition to meet operational specification, fail-rates etc....

They have the responsibility, to do what they can from their side, to sustain Intel CPU performance superiority, in relation with the competition!

Certainly they can't control, what AMD can do for their designs, but they certainly can research and analyze the possibilities, about what AMD can do in a future architecture!

Based on that analysis (and of cource on many, many other factors) , they must design a CPU architecture, that has the above goal (to sustain Intel CPU performance superiority)

The main P4 era was something like 5-6 years in the market, right?

Did they achieve that goal, in this timeframe?

Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't!

And like I said before didn't they fail in the "performance improvements per TDP increasements" ratio factor?

I mean that, they already knew from 2001 that this design has TDP/perf ratio issues!

Unless their original goal was to go from a :

From a 29W TDP PIII 1GHz (18nm)

to a:

52W TDP PIV 1.3GHz (18nm)


But how isn't this a failure?

They nearly doubled the TDP (1,8X), while the performance was nearly the same
(Let's say that the 1GHz PIII had -5% performance in relation with the 1,3GHz PIV, and i would be extremely generous to PIV, saying that!)

Did their original goal was, to nearly double (actually it was 1,8X-1,5X for the whole range) the TDP, while at the same time keep the performance the same?

If the original goal wasn't that, then they failed!

If the original goal was that, then they failed in another aspect!

Because, if their analysis conclusion at the time, was that:

"performance improvements per TDP increasements" ratio factor is not crucial for this design, history proved their analysis wrong!

and on the other hand, if their analysis conclusion at the time, was that:

"performance improvements per TDP increasements" ratio factor is crucial for this design,
but their forecast was that with implementing newer manufacturing technologies (like 13nm,9nm & 65nm) this problem would be solved eventually!

then they failed again in the research and analysis for their design, because the problem remained!

I just love "Monday Morning Quarterbacks" (like me)! :laugh:

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: taltamir
professional baseball,
and government...

Haha, no arguments here

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Athlon XPs couldn't touch them (and they tended to cook themselves)

What do you mean by this, or do just mean their temps?

I don't know the exact cause, but as a PC tech I saw dozens upon dozens of dead Socket A chips over the years, and probably less than 4 or 5 Socket 478 chips. Most of the dead Socket A chips were probably due to user failure, but that was a factor for some people. Besides SNDS, which I never personally saw, the P4s were near bulletproof.

As for value though, one could get a 1700+ or 2500+, etc, and overclock it to the ~2.0-2.2ghz range and be competitive with almost all P4s for a lot less $.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: MODEL3
I guess, that the responsibilities, Intel Engineers have,
are more than the responsibilities, of a plain engineer, or a student of engineering, right?

They are on a completely different level!

There isn't anything unique or special there. All IC design engineers find themselves in a competitive environment, if they weren't then they personally would not have a job to perform.

MODEL3 I think you are conflating the philosophical concept of engineering "the absolute best" cpu with the actual purpose these companies operate (i.e. profits)...engineers aren't asked to build the best of anything, they are asked to build the best they can devise while operating within a given budget and timeline.

The tradeoffs that were made in the decision tree that evolved throughout the development of the netburst microarchitecture is something we have zero insight into. But we know tradeoffs were made, a balance between creating a product that was capable of commanding certain pricepoints (asp's) while at the same time not taking 10yrs to develop or $60B to develop or costing $1000 per chip to manufacture.

How to criticize the tradeoff decisions that were made when we/you/us have no knowledge of the motivation and justification that went into making those decisions?

It takes an extraordinary degree of self-confidence, ignorance enabled arrogance as I refer to it, to feel one is so supremely endowed with the equivalent insight provided by the cumulative education and experience that was brought to bear by thousands of Intel engineers, marketeers, and project managers over the decade or so that netburst was worked on.

Even if I was a lead engineer at Intel who worked directly on P4 design I wouldn't fathom myself as being privy to the entire hierarchy of business decisions and tradeoffs that went into dictating budgets and timelines (which then would require me to make judicious engineering choices in terms of how I budgeted my time for improving performance/watt innovations) for the entire product line.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I don't know the exact cause, but as a PC tech I saw dozens upon dozens of dead Socket A chips over the years, and probably less than 4 or 5 Socket 478 chips. Most of the dead Socket A chips were probably due to user failure, but that was a factor for some people. Besides SNDS, which I never personally saw, the P4s were near bulletproof.

As for value though, one could get a 1700+ or 2500+, etc, and overclock it to the ~2.0-2.2ghz range and be competitive with almost all P4s for a lot less $.

I never really thought about this but you're right. I had an Athlon 1700+ and the motherboard (7VTXE) died; capacitors blown. I had it replaced under warranty and then the replacement board died. I replaced that system with an Athlon 2500+ and that system's board (A7N8X-X) died after about 3 years. My dad got an Athlon 2200+ around that time and it lasted about 4 years until the board died (north bridge was unbelievably hot at stock settings). My brother had an Athlon 2800+ and it lasted about 3 years until the board died.

What was wrong with those AMD motherboards? Are Gigabyte and Asus using cheap parts and over-estimating the kind of load they can handle? I don't know if the P4 boards were bugged as well since I don't now anyone who had a P4.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: taltamir
professional baseball,
and government...

Haha, no arguments here

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Athlon XPs couldn't touch them (and they tended to cook themselves)

What do you mean by this, or do just mean their temps?

I don't know the exact cause, but as a PC tech I saw dozens upon dozens of dead Socket A chips over the years, and probably less than 4 or 5 Socket 478 chips. Most of the dead Socket A chips were probably due to user failure, but that was a factor for some people. Besides SNDS, which I never personally saw, the P4s were near bulletproof.

As for value though, one could get a 1700+ or 2500+, etc, and overclock it to the ~2.0-2.2ghz range and be competitive with almost all P4s for a lot less $.

what kind of "user failure" kills a socket A chip (and not other chips?)

 

[Arkaign]

Overclocking with inadequate cooling, installing the cooler carelessly (cracked die), overvolting, etc. P4s, even Willamettes, had really good IHS and clock throttling with overheating. I'm sure some died from overvolting, and there were widespread enough stories about SNDS that I believe it was a real problem even if I never saw it personally.

It just happens that I saw tons and tons of dead Socket A chips, and almost no dead P4s, leading me to believe that they were easier to kill. I remember seeing one Socket A chip killed by a friend installing a Golden Orb cooler. Was pretty funny actually, he did everything correctly, was twisting the clip to lock the cooler on, and we heard this nasty cracking noise, popped the cooler off, and the chip had shattered. Doh.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: taltamir
professional baseball,
and government...

Haha, no arguments here

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Athlon XPs couldn't touch them (and they tended to cook themselves)

What do you mean by this, or do just mean their temps?

I don't know the exact cause, but as a PC tech I saw dozens upon dozens of dead Socket A chips over the years, and probably less than 4 or 5 Socket 478 chips. Most of the dead Socket A chips were probably due to user failure, but that was a factor for some people. Besides SNDS, which I never personally saw, the P4s were near bulletproof.

As for value though, one could get a 1700+ or 2500+, etc, and overclock it to the ~2.0-2.2ghz range and be competitive with almost all P4s for a lot less $.

what kind of "user failure" kills a socket A chip (and not other chips?)

The socket A chips did not have an integrated heat spreader over it's core. Kind of like Socket 370 P3's. Only there were a lot of people applying too much pressure when mounting the hsf, and cracked the cores. I think that is what is was at least.

 

[taltamir]

well... if the user is doing the same thing, and the socket A chip fails due to its flimsy design, then i wouldn't call it a user error but a design error,

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: taltamir
well... if the user is doing the same thing, and the socket A chip fails due to its flimsy design, then i wouldn't call it a user error but a design error,

That's got to be the poorest logic I've ever witnessed. So, it's XYZ automakers fault if you try driving your manual transmissioned vehicle the same way I drive my automatic transmissioned vehicle? And I suppose you think its also McDonald's fault that that moronic woman poured hot coffee on herself? Hint: when you screw something up, its your fault, not anyone else on Earth's. People who don't have the intelligence that's required to remove the side panel from a computer shouldn't.

 

[taltamir]

those are completely different analogies. Pouring coffe on yourself, and having your CPU crack when installing it are completely different things.

When I worked in customer support, customers often called with "I broke X while installing it" and we replaced it, because we knowingly made X flimsier than it should be to save money, having calculated it to be cheaper to replace when broken.

 

[MODEL3]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
There isn't anything unique or special there. All IC design engineers find themselves in a competitive environment, if they weren't then they personally would not have a job to perform.

I just said that the competitive environment of Intel & AMD (X86 CPU market) is in a completely different league than the competitive environment of a student of engineering or even a plain engineer,
(meaning that although a student of engineering operates in a competitive environment, the stakes (and the problems that must be solved) are a lot higher in the global X86 CPU market!)

Originally posted by: Idontcare
MODEL3 I think you are conflating the philosophical concept of engineering "the absolute best" cpu with the actual purpose these companies operate (i.e. profits)...engineers aren't asked to build the best of anything, they are asked to build the best they can devise while operating within a given budget and timeline.

I never said the "absolute best" cpu!
On the contrary, I said better than the competition!

You mean that one of the main goals of Intel engineers isn't "to try deliver a better performing CPU than the competition"?

Or you think that they don't care?

Like I said, certainly they can't control, what AMD can do for their designs, but they certainly can research and analyze the possibilities, about what AMD can do in a future architecture!

Based on that analysis (and of cource on many, many other factors) , they must design a CPU architecture, that has also the aim "to sustain Intel's CPU performance superiority".

Originally posted by: Idontcare
The tradeoffs that were made in the decision tree that evolved throughout the development of the netburst microarchitecture is something we have zero insight into. But we know tradeoffs were made, a balance between creating a product that was capable of commanding certain pricepoints (asp's) while at the same time not taking 10yrs to develop or $60B to develop or costing $1000 per chip to manufacture.

I agree with all your above points.

Originally posted by: Idontcare
How to criticize the tradeoff decisions that were made when we/you/us have no knowledge of the motivation and justification that went into making those decisions?

Look, I am just a guy without a technical background, that I enjoy technology, and I like to spent some time in a technology Forum like AT to kill a couple of hours trying to have fun in the process!

It's not like that anyone at Intel care about my "point of view", so what harm can do to express my "point of view", other than being right or wrong?

You are taking too seriously the matter!

Originally posted by: Idontcare
It takes an extraordinary degree of self-confidence, ignorance enabled arrogance as I refer to it, to feel one is so supremely endowed with the equivalent insight provided by the cumulative education and experience that was brought to bear by thousands of Intel engineers, marketeers, and project managers over the decade or so that netburst was worked on.

Even if I was a lead engineer at Intel who worked directly on P4 design I wouldn't fathom myself as being privy to the entire hierarchy of business decisions and tradeoffs that went into dictating budgets and timelines (which then would require me to make judicious engineering choices in terms of how I budgeted my time for improving performance/watt innovations) for the entire product line.

Where did i say that i feel:
"so supremely endowed with the equivalent insight provided by the cumulative education and experience that was brought to bear by thousands of Intel engineers, marketeers, and project managers over the decade or so that netburst was worked on"?

On the contrary, i have countless times said that I have absolutely no tech background, and i do all this "forum participation" for Fun (and to learn something in the process for tech and English language)

You think that only equivalent insighted people (with Intel engineers) should make an estimation?

No this is against Freedom of speech!

All persons can make estimations!

The only thing that you can suggest is, if their estimation was right or wrong!


And don't you think that my comment:

I just love "Monday Morning Quarterbacks" (like me)! :laugh:

had the exact same purpose with what you are trying to say?

Don't you think that my purpose was, to critisize in a satirical way, what I did?

Why you are taking soo seriously all these things?


Now about the "labeling"!

What can I say?

I just said (like many many guys here) that it is possible to characterize some parts of the P4 design with the term "engineering failure"

And you called me (only me) a person with "extraordinary degree of self-confidence, ignorance / enabled arrogance"

 

[Arkaign]

Model3, are you related to Apoppin by chance?

 

[MODEL3]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Model3, are you related to Apoppin by chance?

No, why?

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: MODEL3

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Model3, are you related to Apoppin by chance?

No, why?

Heh, I was just getting a kick out of the similar writing style, and frequent use of bolding and italic. I'm not accusing you of being a duplicate or anything, just thought it was funny. If you really were Apoppin, you wouldn't be able to resist :

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: MODEL3

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Model3, are you related to Apoppin by chance?

No, why?

Heh, I was just getting a kick out of the similar writing style, and frequent use of bolding and italic. I'm not accusing you of being a duplicate or anything, just thought it was funny. If you really were Apoppin, you wouldn't be able to resist :

sure i would; but then i am no MODEL3 poster

i dropped out of this awhile back until my ears started burning
- or was it my eyes watering

the MORAL of this lesson is .. IGNORE the engineers
... just like big companies do

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: MODEL3

Originally posted by: Idontcare
There isn't anything unique or special there. All IC design engineers find themselves in a competitive environment, if they weren't then they personally would not have a job to perform.

I just said that the competitive environment of Intel & AMD (X86 CPU market) is in a completely different league than the competitive environment of a student of engineering or even a plain engineer,
(meaning that although a student of engineering operates in a competitive environment, the stakes (and the problems that must be solved) are a lot higher in the global X86 CPU market!)

Originally posted by: Idontcare
MODEL3 I think you are conflating the philosophical concept of engineering "the absolute best" cpu with the actual purpose these companies operate (i.e. profits)...engineers aren't asked to build the best of anything, they are asked to build the best they can devise while operating within a given budget and timeline.

I never said the "absolute best" cpu!
On the contrary, I said better than the competition!

You mean that one of the main goals of Intel engineers isn't "to try deliver a better performing CPU than the competition"?

Or you think that they don't care?

Like I said, certainly they can't control, what AMD can do for their designs, but they certainly can research and analyze the possibilities, about what AMD can do in a future architecture!

Based on that analysis (and of cource on many, many other factors) , they must design a CPU architecture, that has also the aim "to sustain Intel's CPU performance superiority".

Originally posted by: Idontcare
The tradeoffs that were made in the decision tree that evolved throughout the development of the netburst microarchitecture is something we have zero insight into. But we know tradeoffs were made, a balance between creating a product that was capable of commanding certain pricepoints (asp's) while at the same time not taking 10yrs to develop or $60B to develop or costing $1000 per chip to manufacture.

I agree with all your above points.

Originally posted by: Idontcare
How to criticize the tradeoff decisions that were made when we/you/us have no knowledge of the motivation and justification that went into making those decisions?

Look, I am just a guy without a technical background, that I enjoy technology, and I like to spent some time in a technology Forum like AT to kill a couple of hours trying to have fun in the process!

It's not like that anyone at Intel care about my "point of view", so what harm can do to express my "point of view", other than being right or wrong?

You are taking too seriously the matter!

Originally posted by: Idontcare
It takes an extraordinary degree of self-confidence, ignorance enabled arrogance as I refer to it, to feel one is so supremely endowed with the equivalent insight provided by the cumulative education and experience that was brought to bear by thousands of Intel engineers, marketeers, and project managers over the decade or so that netburst was worked on.

Even if I was a lead engineer at Intel who worked directly on P4 design I wouldn't fathom myself as being privy to the entire hierarchy of business decisions and tradeoffs that went into dictating budgets and timelines (which then would require me to make judicious engineering choices in terms of how I budgeted my time for improving performance/watt innovations) for the entire product line.

Where did i say that i feel:
"so supremely endowed with the equivalent insight provided by the cumulative education and experience that was brought to bear by thousands of Intel engineers, marketeers, and project managers over the decade or so that netburst was worked on"?

On the contrary, i have countless times said that I have absolutely no tech background, and i do all this "forum participation" for Fun (and to learn something in the process for tech and English language)

You think that only equivalent insighted people (with Intel engineers) should make an estimation?

No this is against Freedom of speech!

All persons can make estimations!

The only thing that you can suggest is, if their estimation was right or wrong!


And don't you think that my comment:

I just love "Monday Morning Quarterbacks" (like me)! :laugh:

had the exact same purpose with what you are trying to say?

Don't you think that my purpose was, to critisize in a satirical way, what I did?

Why you are taking soo seriously all these things?


Now about the "labeling"!

What can I say?

I just said (like many many guys here) that it is possible to characterize some parts of the P4 design with the term "engineering failure"

And you called me (only me) a person with "extraordinary degree of self-confidence, ignorance / enabled arrogance"

MODEL3 you are taking everything stated after a person quotes you as if every single word in their post is directed solely towards you.

That is not what a public forum is about. If my post was intended to be solely directed towards you then I would have sent it to you as a pm.

It goes without saying that my post is directed towards the "general audience" that is reading thru this thread. True it was motivated in part by the contents of your post which I quoted, but by no means was every sentence in my post crafted as some effort to stifle your ambitions to characterize/criticize anything you feel is worth your efforts to do so.

To put it mildly, I think you are over reacting just a tad. If you need me to expound on it even further then hit me up in pm and I will gladly do so.

 

[MODEL3]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
MODEL3 you are taking everything stated after a person quotes you as if every single word in their post is directed solely towards you.

That is not what a public forum is about. If my post was intended to be solely directed towards you then I would have sent it to you as a pm.

It goes without saying that my post is directed towards the "general audience" that is reading thru this thread. True it was motivated in part by the contents of your post which I quoted, but by no means was every sentence in my post crafted as some effort to stifle your ambitions to characterize/criticize anything you feel is worth your efforts to do so.

To put it mildly, I think you are over reacting just a tad. If you need me to expound on it even further then hit me up in pm and I will gladly do so.

Look, if you are saying that you just quoted,
and only used my post as a motivation to make your points,
for every member that said "that it is possible to characterize some parts of the P4 design with the term engineering failure")


then i misunderstood!

But with the technique you used, you can understand that it was far from obvious what you meant! (I highly doubt that the majority who read your original post, will think that your points directed not only to me!)

Anyway, you cleared the situation!

No need to go private, your word is good!

Anyway, like i said, i think you are taking too seriously the subject!

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: MODEL3
Look, if you are saying that you just quoted,
and only used my post as a motivation to make your points,
for every member that said "that it is possible to characterize some parts of the P4 design with the term engineering failure")

then i misunderstood!

But with the technique you used, you can understand that it was far from obvious what you meant! (I highly doubt that the majority who read your original post, will think that your points directed not only to me!)

Going by your joined date it is understandable that you are not all that familiar with my posting style, or that of some of the other long-term posters here going by the rate of similar misunderstandings you appear to be experiencing in these AT forums (that is no slight against you, just my observation)...but surely you have noticed that not many other posters outside of yourself are finding themselves in the position in which they too feel compelled to write these long semi-combative semi-defensive posts regarding their impressions of others making personal attacks and misquotes and suppression of free speech, etc.

No one can tell you how to feel about other's posting styles...but if you don't invest the time and effort to just sit back, relax a little, and absorb some of the nuances as to how the community in these forums have evolved to operate then you are just going to keep getting frustrated and defensive over and over again.

That's not to say you don't have valid points regarding communication techniques that give rise to more miscommunication than communication, we "old timers" get lazy sometimes and that surely doesn't help anyone understand our posts any better, but I am just trying to give you some advice to reduce your stress level in the coming weeks.

(and since it need be stated explicitly to avoid misunderstanding, I am quoting you and yes I hope you take to heart my attempt to give you some advices but at the same time I drafted my post above with the intentions of it addressing all new posters who have joined the forums and/or lurkers who are considering joining the forums...hence it is a public message and not a pm solely directed towards you)

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: taltamir
professional baseball,
and government...

Haha, no arguments here

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Athlon XPs couldn't touch them (and they tended to cook themselves)

What do you mean by this, or do just mean their temps?

I don't know the exact cause, but as a PC tech I saw dozens upon dozens of dead Socket A chips over the years, and probably less than 4 or 5 Socket 478 chips. Most of the dead Socket A chips were probably due to user failure, but that was a factor for some people. Besides SNDS, which I never personally saw, the P4s were near bulletproof.

As for value though, one could get a 1700+ or 2500+, etc, and overclock it to the ~2.0-2.2ghz range and be competitive with almost all P4s for a lot less $.

what kind of "user failure" kills a socket A chip (and not other chips?)

If I remember correctly the socket A chips had terrible thermal protection. If a heat sink failed or fell off due to not being installed correctly your AMD chip would very likely burn itself out.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
If I remember correctly the socket A chips had terrible thermal protection. If a heat sink failed or fell off due to not being installed correctly your AMD chip would very likely burn itself out.

Yep, Socket A were fragile beasts. I always held my breath when removing the heatsink to re-apply paste. (Back then, we didn't have AS5, or at least I had never heard of it. So I was using white paste, which dries out and becomes rock-solid if you don't change it every couple of years.)

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
If I remember correctly the socket A chips had terrible thermal protection. If a heat sink failed or fell off due to not being installed correctly your AMD chip would very likely burn itself out.

Yep, Socket A were fragile beasts. I always held my breath when removing the heatsink to re-apply paste. (Back then, we didn't have AS5, or at least I had never heard of it. So I was using white paste, which dries out and becomes rock-solid if you don't change it every couple of years.)

I *think* they did have thermal protection of some sort, if I recall correctly the problem was the sensor could only read at a rate of 1C change per second or something like that. So if a fan failed and the temp slowly increased the protection might kick in and be fine. But in a case where the heatsink falls off due to a faulty install job, or too much/little thermal paste and the temp rise too quickly it could burn out. That's how I recall it anyway, could be wrong.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
If I remember correctly the socket A chips had terrible thermal protection. If a heat sink failed or fell off due to not being installed correctly your AMD chip would very likely burn itself out.

Yep, Socket A were fragile beasts. I always held my breath when removing the heatsink to re-apply paste. (Back then, we didn't have AS5, or at least I had never heard of it. So I was using white paste, which dries out and becomes rock-solid if you don't change it every couple of years.)

I *think* they did have thermal protection of some sort, if I recall correctly the problem was the sensor could only read at a rate of 1C change per second or something like that. So if a fan failed and the temp slowly increased the protection might kick in and be fine. But in a case where the heatsink falls off due to a faulty install job, or too much/little thermal paste and the temp rise too quickly it could burn out. That's how I recall it anyway, could be wrong.

I think that may be it. The old thunderbirds were hopeless if you overheated one, but the green palominos/tbreds, and the yellowish bartons, they were a bit tougher made. Still, any Socket A chip deserved extra patience and attention to the level of cooling and the installation routine. Heh, I ended up with a drawer of 50 or 60 dead Socket-As at one point, most of them Thunderbirds/Durons.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: taltamir
those are completely different analogies. Pouring coffe on yourself, and having your CPU crack when installing it are completely different things.

When I worked in customer support, customers often called with "I broke X while installing it" and we replaced it, because we knowingly made X flimsier than it should be to save money, having calculated it to be cheaper to replace when broken.

Do you not know the definition of analogy? If you weren't comparing two dissimilar things, you don't even have an analogy. But let me give you another analogy that you might comprehend. I own a hardware store, and I sell you a sledgehammer and two panes of glass. If you bring me a box full of broken glass pieces tomorrow, I'm going to laugh at you, but I'm not going to give you more glass to install with a sledgehammer.

 

[taltamir]

I know what an analogy is, I said those are two different analogies with different logic behind them, one of which is faulty logic.
And you do it yet again with the suggestion that taking a hammer to a window is the same as having your CPU crack while bolting the heatsink to it.