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Tampered Athlons Hit Oz
"This is some very bad news -- thanks to Tim for alerting us. Rather than paraphrase, I will just quote his email:
'Well it looks like they [fake Athlons] have hit Australia I just recieved my K700 from [an undisclosed source] in perth and have opened it up to put the cold plate on it and to my horror the cpu is a 650 ... the resistor has been changed and serial numbers do not match ...'
We managed to get some pictures of the Athlon in question, and all the pictures are posted, including a summary with each picture, and help for those interested in finding out if their CPU has been tampered with.
More details are available on our frontpage.
We are working on finding an easy way (ie, for 'general' consumption) for those possibly affected to test their processor, and any updates will be posted, again, on our main page :)
Kind Regards,
Lucien Wells.
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Lucien Wells
Editor/Assistant Reviewer & HTML Developer,
TechWatch"
The well-labeled pictures also serve as a primer to understanding the cryptic labels on the side of your processor. But as Lucien points out, checking this out will void your warranty.
All the comments about karma whoring aside, really, Sig, that's an incredibly dumb idea. The public does not need to be educated about what overclocking is. The majority of the public does not need to know that overclocking takes place or how to do it. They just need to know that there are fake Athlon chips out there, and honestly, the 'public' doesn't need to know that either, it's the resellers who need to know. I doubt the shop that sold this chip to this guy realized they were selling a fake chip. The retailers need to run their chips through a test of some sort, some test that doesn't require that they actually boot up a computer with the chip, but maybe a simple electrical or physical test.
Education may be the only defense against exploitation, but you have to be careful who you educate. Educating the public in this case would be futile because half of them wouldn't understand what you were talking about and the other half wouldn't care (not to mention the incredible resources necessary for 'educating the public'). It's better to educate the knowledgable public (ie. the ones selling the stuff) so they can provide good service and abide by the law (which is plenty sufficient, BTW).
If everyone knew everything, that'd be great, but there's no chance that that will ever happen, so make sure you get the right people to know the right things.
I think the public needs to be educated about what overclocking is, how it works, and how to detect it. The industry needs to stop trying to prevent the dissemination of information if it wants to prevent widespread abuse. First, allow enthusiasts to change the clock settings. If they blow their chip up, fine - make it blow an EEPROM if you're worried about warranties should they wish to change the clock setting. Second, make it happen in software - like with the Asus "softmenu" boards.
Education is the only defense against exploitation. The law is insufficient.
I don't think these will help you tell much beyond what stepping number of processor you have. Since 650 and 700 are probably produced on the same process (and the better quality ones are marked 700), it probably won't help.
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I'm the inventory controller and technician and a local "Mom and pop" computer service center. It's my job to check in ALL the inventory that comes our way. It's also my responsibility to check for *good* hardware. About 5-6 months ago i recieved a K6-III 450 that was on order. There was no etching on the cpu cover plate. The specs we're merely penciled in!?!$ Well...after calling the vendor (who gave me an RMA number), i got a little pissed. I mean who would want to give their customers a bogus part! I wound up talking to Corporate Investigations at AMD. They were OUTSTANDING. What they did was: 1) replace my processor after hearing about the bogus one. (they said it was a "test-fab unit" that should have never been released to the public..) 2) Contacted the vendor we purchased it from. 3) Offered the vendor to replace ALL their bogus cpus
with the real thing at no charge..IF they told AMD who was supplying to them. very nice if you ask me. Felt good too...ensuring that my customers and evyone elses got good solid product.
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
two usual issues in k7 setup:
other than that, there should be no other issues for server use.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The site notes that the Athlon core was the .25 die size and 650 Mhz. Now AMD was selling these 650 cores underclocked at 500MHz, because it was cheaper than going back and making 500 Mhz cores. Pricewatch lists Athlon 500 at ~130, 650's at ~150-160, and 700's at ~190. I think that whoever did this bought Athlon 500's (with the 650 core), took 10 minutes of soldering to undo the underclocking by AMD and overclock it a little to 700, and instantly got over $60 profit per chip (probably more if they got the 500's in bulk). I don't think anyone would take the time to solder a 650 into a 700. Also, I would be very pissed because the guy wanted a 700 because of the .18 die size, which is more overclockable than the .25 of the 650 core.
Am I reading this correctly?
In order to determine if your Athlon is counterfeit, you have to void your warranty.
Someone want to call up AMD and ask them how they suggest we then find out?
Now the problem with fakes shows up. Firstly, it have been said on top of this comment that "now everybody knows how to do it.". Security by obscurantism is no security.
Now to the practical side: To what temperature does a non-overclocked Athlon's plastic case get ? Is it imperative that the case be black for thermal dissipation or could it be transparent so that people could peek at the core inside without voiding the warranty ? Not a translucent case like iMac but a truly glassy plastic.
Not only it would be good to avoid frauds, would look nice too. :)
damit I think they riped me off, when I opened my Althon box all I found was a fried egg and 2 strips of bacon. It actucally worked out well because I was hungry and the egg was sunny side up, Mmmm my favorite. Oddly even though, the bacon did clock in at 700Mhz without over heating, but now my dog is sniffing at my computer case...
I should of notice when grease was driping from the bottom of the box, and another thing, how the hell can you have a good breakfast without hot grits? What are these people thinking.
Atleast Intel gives you free coffee refills
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
My experience comes from messing with recycling plastic on a hobbyist level - remolding plastic soda bottles and the like. It can be done very cheaply - see description for this book.
The description of the case - brittle, shinier than the original - sounds like plastic that has been remolded. I propose that the counterfeiters might be just remolding the original cases. Any plastics engineers want to comment?
I wish they actually disclosed the name of the retailer. Such retailers hurt customers AND AMD, and their names should be widely known and disclosed.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
AMD has several useful utilities to determine information about your Athlon. You can find them at the following URL:
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/bin/
Among the programs listed here are things to measure the clock speed, find the CPUID, and other information. Binary and sources are available.
I have no clue how useful this would be in these cases, but it's certainly worth looking at.
What I really wish would happen would be for BIOS manufactures and CPU manufactures to get together and make the BIOS display both the real CPU speed and what it is currently running at in large letters during POST. If it was overclocked it could even display a message stating that in a very clear way (text that fills the whole screen saying "Warning: Processor overclocked"
People who overclock wouldn't be hurt because the banner would be there only for 5 or 6 seconds and would remove Intel's excuse so maybe they would stop locking the clock (yeah right.)
Normal people would freak out if they put thier new 750Mhz Duron in thier motherboard and see such a message.
I am sure that some remakers would get around this by hacking the BIOS, but it would stop people from getting remarked CPU upgrades. Also if someone happend to flash thier BIOS in the future after buying a new PC, they would be informed of the trickery then.
As far as software, could H. Oda's CPUID program be used to verify what exactly you have in your system. It tells me I have a Celeron 300a running at 450MHz. Maybe it is different with AMD CPUs.