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1.13GHz Pentium3 Processors Unstable? Answer:Yes
brennan73 writes "Last week, Tom's Hardware wrote a very critical review of the Pentium3 1.13GHz, specifically mentioning serious stability issues. Today, HardOCP wrote an article of their own backing Tom up and describing their own experiences; they even got Anand in on it. Probably the most interesting thing to me is that none of the tested sample CPUs was able to run Tom's Linux kernel compilation test. After Rambus, this is the last thing Intel needs. Are they shooting themselves in the foot AGAIN?". Update by: HeUnique : Tom has updated the story, so I recommend to read the update.Update: 08/28 06:44 PM by H :Check out the latest burst from ZDNet - it appears that Intel will be recalling the Pentium3 1.13 Ghz. Thanks Evan.
It seems that Intel thinks the only thing we care about is raw speed. Trying to one-up AMD is simply going to get them into a hole in terms of public perception. I'm surprised that a company as big and diverse as Intel would stake their reputation on a speed pissing-contest.
-This sig intentionally left blank
They announce a product before it's completely designed. They "release" an unstable, unworkable version 1.0 of something, just to get their name out on a press-release. All to divert attention from a competitors product and get some cash flowing in to fund the development of version 2.0 (or 3.1) which is the actual product.
The competitor releases their offering later, but it's of higher quality. Still, the vapour has already dulled people's minds to the competitor's efforts and value.
Techies know better, but how many home-users and managers do? We have to make it clear to the business decision makers and the casual users, that this is not about Intel being technologically superior or better able to deliver on schedule than AMD or Transmeta or anyone else - it's marketting and it needs to be stated as such.
Not that I think Transmeta is a God-send, but let's let numbers and solid products do the talking. A 1.3Ghz CPU from Intel, even though it's been demoed, is still vapour-ware, until it's solid and readily available.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Yeah there are quite a few UK magazines and websites citing similar problems and even DOAs with the 1.13ghz chips.
That isn't to mention the severe shortage of the actual chips. UK Mags dont even get their own chip, they have it for a few days and then instructions on who to post it to next.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just an overclocked 1ghz chip, and they've picked the best few to ship at 1.13 in a desperate attempt to one-up AMD.
However AMD today announced real tangible availability of their 1.1ghz ath's and Compaq, Big Blue, HP, Gateway and Fujitsu Siemens are amonst the big names about to ship this in systems.
Looks damn good for AMD
This actually makes me nervous about all the Gig chips being built. What kind of testing is really going on with these chips and is it adequate enough or are the manufacturers so eager to get another press release out in order to get a boost to their stock they are failing to realize their design is flawed?
Intel has been suffering some serious blows, both in the technical world and in the business world and cannot afford another setback, especially since these new gig plus chips are supposed to be selling for the holiday season (as gamers are one of the first to eat up such advancements).
If I had any advice for Intel, it would be to retrench and spew out tons of 700+ chips at low prices to build up marketshare while focusing on turning the Gig plus chips into something worthwhile. This is just an off the cuff suggestion as IANA-MBA.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
The odd thing is that we're seeing stuff go wrong now with corporate capitalism what we saw go wrong with communism.
These huge corporations keep getting bigger and bigger, allowing themselves a stranglehold on the industry, and in doing so, they become hugely beauracratic, heirarchical, and conservative.
So some horrible design issue is found in one of Intel's products, something that would guarantee failure for a smaller company, and what happens? Intel denies a few allegations, issues a few workarounds to Microsoft, and hires a few new spin doctors to make sure everything works okay.
The computer industry is just catching on to this. The oil and tobacco industries have been doing it for years. Microsoft shows an uncanny brilliance for turning a bumbling mistake into a "feature." But at least, unlike Shell, they're covering up system crashes and not genocide.
It took Communism around 80 years to become so big and unwieldy that it collapsed under it's own weight. After 114 years of corporate rule (SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY ), it seems that the incredible arrogance of corporate capitalism is putting it on the same route.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
In related news, Intel Corportaion recently purchased "Tom's Hardware Guide" and "HardOCP" for a record 1 billion dollars. Intel's spokesperson had these comments early this morning:
"We really like their [Tom's Hardware] input, and we wanted everyone in Newfoundland to be able to recieve the bounty of his wisdom. That's why we've purchased Tom's organization, and we're strategically relocating Tom to Newfoundland, where he will perform a streaming audio broadcast to everyone within earshot in his new deep, dark, hole in the ground."
Further updates as events warrant. Rambus Corporation (Nas: RAMBUS) had no comment, but their stock spiked 30 points on the news.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Disclaimer: I have AMD and Intel CPU's at home. I'm agnostic when it comes to processors, give me speed and stability and I don't care who it is from!
p u/thunderbird_1-1ghz/
Check out the review of the 1.1 ghz Athlon at
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/c
Good marks, great performance. However, look at this blurb from the review about the high return rates of high speed Athlons:
"We haven't had any more AMD CPUs fry on us, but we did talk to a mail order house that said some disturbing things. They told us that they have had approximately a 10% return rate on AMD Athlon Thunderbird CPUs. That is a painfully high failure rate. They said that some distributors place bar codes on the underside of the Athlon Thunderbird CPUs and that these barcoded CPUs often come back with their barcodes burnt. Their Duron failure rate, however, has fallen to normal and acceptable levels."
Could it be that both Intel and AMD are too busy racing each other to take proper care in the Quality Control arena?
Also, it's a software problem
</FUD>
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
I found out about this from Tom's review of the Athlon 1.1ghz, here is the key quote I forwarded to a few friends:
l on-02.html
It turned out that the kernel compilation failed on all three Pentium III
1.13 GHz samples in Kyle's lab, right in front of the eyes of Intel's
engineer. My CPU happened to be the flakiest of the three, as it failed in
other tests on different platforms as well.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000828/ath
its pretty well known that if you run SMP on a bx-board, you better cool the hell out of that bx chip. and even this won't stop the inevitable lockup that will occur days or weeks after the last reboot. its a fact. and if your SMP bx system isn't locking up, you're not loading it down enough. try 4 instances of seti@home (2 per cpu) and wait a few weeks. it will lockup.
given this track record, I don't doubt that the ghz p3 chip will also be unstable.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
the above links on Tom's Hardware were published a month ago. For an article published today on thje AMD 1.1 Ghz, go here
In Tom's original article he utterly trashed Intel and the sample before contacting Intel about the flaky nature of his specimen.
He should have contacted Intel first, before writing his review. It benefits me more, as a potential customer, to know how Intel handles such a situation. That he contacted PR (public relations) doesn't help me much, as I'm sure I wouldn't contact that department with a quality issue.
Through the articles Tom has written concerning Intel, it's not difficult to see him as bearing some sort of grudge. Other companies products may not cut the mustard in his tests, but he rarely trashes them.
IMHO it is good for Intel to have such a critic, but it helps better if he gives them the benefit of doubt before writing their specimen off as typical of their entire offering. I would at the very least assume it may have suffered some damage in shipping and request a replacement. Returning the defective part to them may give up his "evidence", but allows Intel to determine what may have gone wrong.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The issue is that heatsinks for PIII/Celeron and Thunderbird/Duron arn't interchangeable due to different physical dimensions of the chips. If you use an AMD approved heatsink or one specifically designed for T-Bird/Duron (e.g. there is a special Golden Orb version for them) then it'll be fine, but if you use one made for an Intel CPU then you may well damage the CPU.
I wonder if the problem with Intel right now is simply that they're trying too hard.
Maybe they're trying to stay ahead of AMD, and thats causing them to do things more quickly then they should, resulting in mistakes. It probably can't be good for morale over there to see that seemingly out of nowhere AMD has come in and almost taken over the high end single cpu market.
So the guys at Intel simply want to be better then AMD, but they don't have time to do what that would actually require (some pretty major architechture changes), and so we end up with stuff like this P3, since they have to release *something*.
I bet if management were to walk down there and say "ok, we're not going to release anything new for the next few months, I want you guys to take as much time as you need to redesign things so we're on top again", they could probably do it.
Of course, they aren't being given a mandate like that.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I think this is a huge blow to Intel. Speeding up big, hairy compiles (like the Linux kernel) is one of the few reasons I could think of for getting a 1GHz+ CPU. If it can't do that what good is it?
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
AMD CPU's require VERY GOOD cooling, and many people would try to use either cheap heatsink/fans or ones meant for celeron or FCPGA P3. These are NOT interchangeable generally. In some cases contact will not be made with the chip (e.g. some Alpha coolers have small feet). AMD specs require higher contact force to be applied. Without heatsink/fan, the 1GHz cpu will burn in 8 seconds (source : AMD). There really is no chance to see this coming (like, system hanging or failing to boot); if you screw it up, it will be dead right there and then.
Second problem is that cpu core is exposed and extremely fragile. Couple that with very hard to clip on heatsinks (see contact force above), and you get many cases of cracked core. I did it myself, luckily it was just a small scratch and it still works. The biggest offender was the very popular Golden Orb.
AMD chips runs very hot. VERY hot. So cool them well and they will serve you well.
AMD's 760 and Via's KX266 chipsets will both support Athlon and Duron SMP, and with both be out around the end of the year (Christmas?).
>Here's the thing I don't really understand (well, I understand it, but I don't accept it): Most programs and games don't need that fast a
>processor, so why are people buying it? The need for speed?
'Cause they're told they need it.
A recent issue of _Consumer_Reports_ stated that a new buyer should expect a minimum speed of 1 GHz in her/his new computer (unless it's used for non-CPU intensive tasks like word processing & Email).
Sheesh, I've been using computers with an average speed in the 400-600 MHz range (well, my home computer has two 400 MHz), & I have seen no problems with any of those being ``too slow". (For once, Andy is ahead of either Bill or Linus.)
The only reason I can think that _Consumer_Reports_ would state that is because the OEMs' PR flacks talked them into it.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I think AMD will keep Intel in their current tizzy right up until they deliver their death stroke in the form of sledgehammer. Intel will again be taken completely by surprise as they were focussing on gaining their bragging rights back in the 32 bit world, which will be inconsequential in just a few years. I don't expect they'll last much longer after AMD catches them flat footed in the 64 bit arena.
Of course, Intel's been doing a lot of stuff right with Itanium. They've been making sure that a lot of OSes will run on the chips before the chips are even out the door, and they're making sure heavily optimizing compilers are available for the chips. AMD could still screw it up and become the technological almost-ran in the 64 bit arena. And Intel still has a lot of influence in the motherboard/chipset manufacturers. It doesn't matter how technologically great your chip is if there isn't a motherboard you can put it in (Witness the continuing lack of Athlon SMP motherboards.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?