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AMD Ends Overclocking On Durons
Jai writes: "AMD have finally done it. The crime has been committed and now we must reflect on this and look at setting ourselves a new pathway to overclocking AMD's successful Duron and Athlon Processors. Basically this means the pins for the multiplier are gone and no longer physically exist on the chip. Insane Hardware have a Duron and they are showing everyone as the overclocking world is filled with gloom."
Since you base your buying decisions on politics and not technology, you still have many choices: IDT, Transmeta, Cyrix, API, etc. I don't know if all of these manufacturers have unlocked FSB multipliers, but you may want to check some of them out!
Personally I think overclocking is rather lame. I am still on P5-200, 1996 and the only thing I can't do on it is to play latest games. If you can't devise algo fast enough to run on lower spec machine, then you must die anyway. AMD is doing a great job to give me faster CPUs are affordable prices. Overclockers screw their business model, which in turn will mean higher prices for consumers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm.. that's the whole point of overclocking... skimping on the processor so you can buy better quality components. At least for me, because I spent less on an "inferior" processor, i was able to buy 256mb ram and 2 fast ibm hard disks.
I was going to spend the same amount either way, I just don't want to spend 40% of it on a processor.
Toms has some benches showing a Duron 600 or 700 whooping the arse of a 900mhz celly :)
Till now, I rejected Intel to support AMD.
;-)
Now I can buy Intel procs again since AMD is starting to become a fscking irritating chipzilla too... yay!
Let's think this through logically. New Duron 750's that people have STILL have the pins. If after week 31 all Duron CPU's are locked, why does AMD's latest still have their pins??
glad to see you are such a VLSI expert bloody AC... And how many credit hours in chip fab do you have?
mov ah, 0
mov al, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
wow, your celeron 566 at 850, ok. Maybee in a good mobo but not in a cheap-o all-in-one crap board with onboard video.
You would be better off buying the duron 700 for a whole $12 more, and having a stable system that will kick the schite out of you "850"mhz celeryII. You must remember that the Duron has a much better bus under it than a celeron does. Even if you got it up to 133mhz FSB you STILL wouldn't have the performance of a duron..
Get a hobby you can actually do.....
i worked for compusa as a tech for 2 years (and even though I hated it I have to say this much) I can say that the new machines sold were fine, if the processors were replaced it was done at the manufacture. I worked on many comppc's and even though they may be crap, i only saw one with the wrong processer, and it wasn't OC'd, so obviously just an error. What i did see was corrupt techs pulling processors from refurbs and replacing them with their old hardware OC'd. When we discovered this the machines were field destroyed.
Possibly, as I said, it's by no means conclusive, however the real proof, to me, is in the question of why AMD would go to the expense of entirely removing a set of pins, as opposed to just not connecting them to the die? Both solutions are just as effective as each other.
Digital electronics don't work that way. There's no such thing as "prone to errors" or slowly breaking down. Either it works or it doesn't.
Digital electronics is still made of analog transistors, which are made of diffenrently doped Si-regions (n/p). Every increase in temperature will increase the mobility of dope inpurities and thus change the n and p regions. This can lead to damaged transistors or transistors that do not provide the proper voltage levels. Of course there is a safety margin in voltage levels, so it will take considerable diffusion of impurities to render the electronics useless. Breakdown of digital logic will occur suddenly (thats probably what you mean). Basically, every temperature decrease will increase the lifetime of ICs.I thougt I read at tomshardware (can't find it back) that AMD will allow overclocking on their future processors, but at startup, a line like
"Athlon T-Bird 800 running at 950Mhz"
This seems a very effective way to prevent large scale corruption, and let the hobbyist perfectly overclock it's own processor.
I just got myself an atholon t-bird 800, and overclocked it successfully to 1Ghz. (see www.tomshardware.com how to overclock a socket A processor)
Whilst I'm not disputing the possibility of AMD nailing the multiplier hack in their new chips, I doubt they'd be removing pins. In fact, on closer inspection, there are four perfectly blue squares in that image -- where there should, probably, be a few golden pins and a pixelated blue background. Use a decent image manipulation program and zoom in on the area highlighted with the red lines in the image, till you get to about 12:1. It's not all that conclusive, and it's a damned good job if somebody did doctor it, but it's suspicious all the same.
-Dave
Also you said they re-locked it. However I don't recall AMD ever having any chips that had either front side bus or multipliers locked...
- tred
There has to be something we can do to stop these OEM's from doing to the public. If there was a guildline that that OEM dealers had to follow that if they clocked a computer past its designed speed, they would have to label the computer CLEARLY that they did this, that would be the way to stop them.
We all know that companies would still do this, but if there was a large enough penalty for doing this, it would scare OEMs from trying to do it, that would be the thing.
It happend to me back when P-233 was the shit.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Its not what it is, its something else.
I call it "seemingly illegal" because I really didn't know much about it at the time, but then I saw some really blatant examples of overclocking and such. It's interesting that a merchant would sell CPUs advertised as having clock speeds that I had never heard of (at the time, before I learned more about overclocking.) People were buying them up like crazy. I assume they were mostly people who didn't know they were marked wrong, but I guess the lure of a motherboard/CPU combo for so cheap is too strong for a lot of folks... little do they know the only reason it's a combo is that's how they get the funky clock speed.
Anyway, it's gotten me wondering if anyone buys these things knowing full well that they are overclocked?? If you knew someone was marking stuff wrong, would you still buy it cheap?
PointlessGames.com -- Go waste some time.
MassMOG.com -- Visit the site; Use the word.
Eh, this is OLD NEWS.. And UnaClocker has already found a work around... http://www.procooling.com/html/the_athlon_conspira cy.shtml
Because AMD is stopping overclocking it's preventing vendors who are dishonest. Now you or I can not be sold a chip which is overclocked and be told a lie to which the real fabrication limits are.
Justen Stepka
I don't think anyone has ever overclocked a cpu and had it die on them. Most of the time if you go to high it refuses to work until you bring it back down. When the chip starts hitting 70 or 80c they automatically shutdown to prevent damage. Not to defend shady companies, but most overclocked systems are just very unstable, and the vendor can just claim its a win98 issue.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You make have to log in to Toms Hardware Delphi forum to see this link, but here is the picture that fake was based on.
You know what? I really could care less about not being able to overclock a CPU. People end up spending more money on special hardware just to save money on the CPU so they can overclock it, its just stupid.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Taking out the pins only disables the functionality about being able to easily adjust the clock multiplier in BIOS. The other way to change the Tbird/Duron's clock multiplier is to modify the copper bridges on the top ceramic of the processor, by cutting some with an X-acto knife and closing others with a conductive pen (or even pencil lead).
Bzzzzt. Read the article at insane hardware. Those pins are required even if you alter the bridges on top of the processor.
zsazsa
There is. AMD is working with BIOS manufacturers to embed the CPU's "actual" speed into the CPU's silicon so that the BIOS can compare the chip's clocking against its manufactured speed. They also promised that once these systems start rolling off the assembly lines that they will unlock the multiplier of their chips.
I can understand from a hobby standpoint why you'd want to fool around with your processor speed, but I mean there's a REASON they're shipped at the speeds they are. And please, tell me one good reason why anyone would choose speed over stability*? Especially when you've got the insane clock speeds you have now AS IT IS. With all the other factors that make a computer slow, processor would be the last thing I'd look at these days.
;)
Try underclocking and buying more ram.
(*Spare me the "It's not unstable if you cool it with freon" wackyness
-- The unsig...
How does this help AMD? Don't they make more money from having such an overclockable chip? Don't they make more money when overclockers burn out their chips and have to buy new ones? I guess I just don't understand the logic behind this... IANAOC.
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Hmm ... hack from the 486 days? Step forward from x86? I'm not sure this indicates anything of the sort. Just how is a non-overclockable board 'higher end'? Since the first multiplier was done a couple of chip generations ago it is surely just an x86 variant(something not specified in the specs?).
This is only the end of the mulitplier unlock. It was nice while it lasted, but Duron owners will still be able to toy with overclocking by cranking up the bus speed. There's still a lot to be played with-- Celerons and P3s are still commonly overclocked huge amounts by computer hobbyists! Mantle
... burn the specced speed into the chip, but still allow changing the multiplier? If Intel can burn a unique serial number into the PIII, then surely everyone can burn a "recommended speed (multiplier)" into them, perhaps putting a small write-once PROM register somewhere on the chip (not necessarily onto the same piece of silicon itself, since I don't know anything about VLSI and can't tell if this is feasable, but perhaps onto a secondary device in the same package, like the L2 cache used to be). That way, anyone could go into System Information / System Summary (please excuse the Win2K language here) and see "x86 Family 6 Model 2 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD specced at 650 Mhz running at 800 Mhz". All they have to do is burn the PROM as soon as they decide how fast it can pass the tests at.
Do you have *any* clue about how to go about testing 10,000 microprocessors? How manu op codes are there? How many op code combinations? Now figure out the permutations for each pipeline, for each stage of the pipeline.
It's not like they can use a logic probe here, guy. How many millions of transistors are there?
What is the retail cost per transistor?
It's not like they are testing light bulbs here. They are marketing (arguably) the most complex consumer grade device known to man.
Now, I agree that a serious enough eratum needs to be addressed by replacing the microprocessor. But less serious errata can and should be addressed with software, microcode, or BIOS workarounds.
Joe Goldmeer
What is needed here is not a solution consisting of "crippling" the processor to make it impossible (or more difficult) to overclock, but a clear method of telling if it's overclocked or not.
AMD, how about putting in a microcode program into the processor's initialisation sequence to check if the processor is overclocked and display a big warning (on standard VGA hardware) for a few moments (or until a key is pressed on a standard PC keyboard) if it is?
That would stop the grey-marketeers in their tracks and also give the legitimate overclockers something to point to and say "Look what I did!"
Well to tell you the truth this happened about 2 weeks ago. But many overclocking sites have stores which have thundrebird and durons for sale. These chips are pre-unlocked and ready to overclock. One such site is the Over clocking store at athlonoc.com.
"I INSTALLED LUNIX AND FPROTTED HIS TARBALL!!!!!@#"
Bzzzzt. I don't care what the people at Insane Hardware say... The FID pins are only for the motherboard to tell the CPU what speed it should run. The copper bridges internally tell the CPU itself what it should run at. They are what originally set what the CPU runs at. If they didn't actually work, then the CPU has no idea what to run at. It has to fall back on something, and the copper bridges are the lowest level of multiplier and voltage determination.
It's really a shame... At first, AMD supported the overclocking fully. The problem was that nasty resellers (like CompUSA) would grind the original markings off the faceplates and mark it up one jump (a 600 would become a 650, etc.) and people installing the chips in their computer would set the spped at that. This was _real_ common in the Socket 7 days, when there was no protection whatsoever for this, which is why K6 series had engraved metal faceplates instead of paint (it made remarking easier to spot).
Then AMD put the copper bridges on the top of the Socket A chips to set the multiplier, a technique which made it harder (while still possible) to change the clock, and which made remarking also quite apparent. If I understand the insane hardware article, this no longer works either.
This shows the problem that poor reselling techniques (i.e. fraudulent ones) can have with the community at large.
"Your mouse has been moved. Windows 95 must be restarted for the change to take effect."
It seems to me that the Duron will be used on sub-$1200 PCs from Compaq and Hateway but will an experienced computer technician (or someone who actually cares about overclocking) really look towards a Duron? I doubt it.
y -Life people. People who don't care if they can get 35.1 but not 35.2 FPS, people who *won't want to overclock* their computer.
Durons are cheap processors ($100 for 650MHz) so you really shouldn't expect to get a lot out of them. Sure you *can* play Quake with them but they're not meant for professional or gaming use, they're meant for I-Just-Want-to-Buy-The-Internet-And-Get-On-With-M
My $.02
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
At the rate clock speeds are rising, you'll be able to get the speed you want soon, without overclocking.
Doesn't AMD have a responsibility to limit overclocking in order to eliminate the fraudulent sale of overclocked systems?
Most retail PC buyers couldn't tell if a system has been overclocked or not. And if John Smith's home PC eventually burns out, doesn't it negatively effect AMD's reputation?
This is hardly a cause for concern, seeing as how Tom's Hardware has an article on how to change the settings without needing the pins.
If all chips were rated on the number of Floating Point Operations (FLOPs), I could give a better post, but they don't so I can't.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I just finished reading the article mentioned in the story, but I found a small lesser known hardware site with a wonderful article on the duron and overcoming the limits AMD imposed. It's on the main page. http://www.oc-power.com
Cheers!
if the high end chips are also overclockable, it does not screw up the business model, it would enhance it.
--
I had a friend buy one, the company even SAID it was OC'ed, Then, when the Chip Did die (after like 1 week) the company tried to blame them for not having it in a Well Cirulated Area.. Altho OC'ing can be Good Clean fun, it can be used for the Purpose of Evil, sorta like Marry Jane..... hhmm...
-Its like Deja Vu all over again!-
Intel did *no* tests of the 1.13GHz. No, wait, that's not true; they did test it: There's a very simple test for CPU's; they call it 'install linux and try compiling the kernel'. Doesn't take that much time, really. Intel performed this test (or a similar one), discovered that the processor _FAILED_MISERABLY_, then decided to go ahead and market it anyway.
I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons. -R.W. Emerson
If you have a look at these pictures posted by DrR0M in the Overclockers.com.auforums : http://www.overclockers.com.au/ubb/Forum10/HTML/00 0163.html
You will notice that they look quite similar and would tend to indicate that the 'pin-less' pictures on InsaneHardware are in-fact fake.
Take a look and see for yourself.
I have also asked Jai (from InsaneHardware) to comment about the apparent similarity of the two pictures, and hope to hear a reply soon.
Sorry
Here is the proper link to the Overclockers.com.au - Forums
- where it appears that the AMD 'pinless' are pictures are infact a fake.
http://www.overclockers .com.au/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000163.html
This article is almost 2 months old. AMD just made the method shown here impossible.
sup
AMD know fine well that most of us (spare the die hard freon cooling bunch) would likea bit of extra CPU power.
My next system upgrade was planned to be a duron 700 running at 900mhz which would give me 87% or so of the power of a 1ghz Thunderbirdie.
I could afford the thunderbird. Sure it would have meant no voodoo5 and maybe even no film scanner but by locking the duron they want to push me into spending a higher proportion of my budget on a cpu that I otherwise would.
Plus it will raise the overall percieved stability of their cpus since as mentioned before the vendors will get away from it.
That's still pretty naieve to think that that eliminates the problem.
Ultimately the BIOS in most modern systems can easily be replaced since it's only software.
If a manufacturer is sufficiently dodgy to be selling marked up cpus then they probably woudln't realy mind flashing the bioses to hide their sins.
Anyway you are already expecting all motherboards to have their existing bioses replaced with new ones that support this extended CPUID. No novice user is going to recognise that their motherboard is a few months older than it should be...!
Anyway there is also the further problem of how the fsck do u expect AMD to do this. I guess they'd have to generate difference wafers for each speed of CPU.
At the end of the day AMD and Intel only manufacture a few different chips and then sort them by tolerance to feed the different markets.
In transistor terms theres really no difference between a 700 and an 850 but in order to keep the overclocking market you want AMD to double their overheads..?
On second thought, this might still work.
sup
According to Anand, the Duron 750 beats the 850 celeron. The Celeron 850 barely beats the Duron 700. I'd rather have the Duron.
Yea man, chips are getting cheap. The differance between Intel and AMD CPU's is getting closer and closer.
OOh, in a motherboard manual. Than it MUST be true!
one of my friends worked in an intel fab lab over the summer, and he is all worried about overclocking now... the smaller the pathways get on the actual chip, the larger the risk is that overclocking can actually destroy the chip.
;)
In stopping overclock, AMD is merely doing the same thing that manufacturers did when they made a safer system for electrical outlets: protecting the end user from damaging their product or themselves. Granted, overclocking a chip and burning it out is not going to physically hurt the end user (not compared to sticking a finger into an unprotected wall outlet) but when you find out that you just melted your new processor--you might punch a wall rather hard--which could physically hurt you
mov ah, 0
mov al, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
I was thinking that AMD at least could have made more customers by allowing overclocking still so we would invest in socket A motherboards and therefore, kinda lock us up in an AMD upgrade path for future processors
Would they have really made that many more customers? Does your average joe schmoe care about being able to OC his duron? No, of course he doesn't. He cares that processor A, at X MHz, will stomp the pants off processor B running at the same speed. Sometimes not even then. Sometimes he just cares which CPU has the bigger number before the MHz
Overclockers probably don't compose 5% of the people who buy Computers, and probably compose even less of a percentage of those who buy AMD. AMD wants to sell to everyone. They do this by producing a better product than the competition.
They don't do it by allowing vendors/retailers to alter the state of their chip and selling it as something it's not. If they want to protect the end user from shady vendors (and there ARE shady vendors (I admit, I just like typing 'shady'))by disallowing people from altering the operation of the chip AMD sells them (or at least impeding alteration), and that doing so will lose them a very small amount of customers, do you think they're not going to do it?
The fact is, AMD makes a better product than Intel. And a cheaper one. If the only thing keeping you from "switching" is the fact that they now don't want you messing with their CPU, something's wrong.
I think AMD is underestimating the value of the positive word of mouth they get when they allow maximum overclocking. the more the powerusers walk around talking about overclocking an AMD, they more they are saying "AMD". Reminds me of the old saw, "advertising is when you say you are good in bed. PR is when your ex-girlfriends say it. PR is better."
The multiplier pins may be gone on your new Duron, but the multiplier can be unlocked anyway!
Read about it here: http://www.tweakers.net/reviews.ds p?Document=150
Woohooo 900Mhz, here I come!
And on top of that, I've heard that this Insane Hardware article is a hoax...
;-)
So until I actually see a chip for myself that's missing these pins, I'll continue the direction I was headed before I read this crap.
Of course, there has never, ever been a hoax or rumor posted on Slashdot.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
--
There's something wrong when people think their customers should be OBLIGATED to do things the company's way.
what exactly does the soldering temperature have anything to do with? They are talking about the chip die, and there is no solder there excpet to the pin connectors. This chip itself is just a bunch of silicon and inpurities, and temperature and frequency can both contribute to the deterioration of the silicon, and thus your chip
I know there's a large (or small but vocal?) contingent of people who think that overclocking is Sticking It To The Man, but it's a pretty pithy form of rebellion. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who really benefitted in a measurable way from a 10% speed boost. Does Word load faster? Are you getting 357 frames per second instead of 348 in timedemo? Is your internet connection faster? Are you saving months of time running those complex numeric simulations you're always running, the kind that take months of computer time?
Heck, you already bought your Athlon or Pentium. You're giving money to AMD and Intel; you're not putting one over on them. They love it if you run your CPU too hot and have to get a new one more frequently. So let's stop acting like this is subversive, okay?
There is more than one way to improve the performance of the system, and I would encourage the overclocking community to continue on finding those tweaks and optimizations. This isn't the end of the road, they just need to broaden their horizon.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You probably meant to say that the median mental age is 12. Between the trolls, the bible thumpers, and the 3L33T H4X0Rs, Slashdot is one big mosh pit of hate, zeal, and bigotry. Don't agree with me? Turn the threshold down to -1 and see what I'm talking about (Personally, I leave the threshold at 0, because sometimes the ACs do have something intelligent to say, and sometimes I need a good laugh at the troll posts).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
here's one. Unfortunately not for the faint of hart. It requires some soldering...
I work at the Parts counter at CompUSA, and, when we had them, the AMD CPUs never left the factory shrink wrap of their boxes. Those were directly from AMD, not some OEM with 300-grit sandpaper and a white pen.
However, right now Intel and AMD do not distribute to retailers, including CompUSA, BestBuy, and the like. (I don't know about Fry's, there aren't any in Massachusetts). Just to recap, CompUSA never even took the CPUs out of their packaging, let alone participate in fraudulent activities.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Well, it's interesting that you would say that. It's hard to tell how much AMD is actually stopping remarkers by doing this, compared to making it harder for overclockers to changer their multipliers...
Taking out the pins only disables the functionality about being able to easily adjust the clock multiplier in BIOS. The other way to change the Tbird/Duron's clock multiplier is to modify the copper bridges on the top ceramic of the processor, by cutting some with an X-acto knife and closing others with a conductive pen (or even pencil lead).
When the processor is overclocked in BIOS, it's much easier to tell, since you can go into the section that has FSB and multiplier adjustments and see if they're set at default or at a specific clock lock. If the bridges were modified, you can't tell at all until you open up your computer, take off the heatsink, and look at the top of the processor's die.
So as far as remarkers are concerned, I'd imagine that they'll go ahead and do the bridge modification, especially since it's harder to detect. Meanwhile, the overclocking hobbiests can't take advantage of the overclocking features of their new Asus K7A or Abit KT7 motherboards they just bought.
Anyone know if Transmeta's chips will be overclockable?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Does no one else remember an article posted just last month dealing with this? AMD has already announced that its future chips will DECLARE ON BOOTUP what speed they are made for and what speed they currently are. This will make it blatantly obvious for any users who buy an OC'd processor w/o knowing it. So with this technology being implemented, why hurt the OC niche market? I imagine that AMD gets a TON of great word-of-mouth advertising from AMD fanatics (myself included), so why shoot themselves in the foot on this one? I don't get it...
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Let me give you the lowdown
why spend $400 for a P3 800 when we can spend $250 FOR A p3 600 and just o/c it? Now I'm not sure if these prices are correct, but i'm just using it as an example. If you can save money becuase you know a little more about computers, why wouldn't you do it?
Everyone seems to forget that the orignal bus mutliplier was hack. It was invented so that 486 chips could run faster than the bus speed. This is cool because it means that we are taking one more step towards advancing past the whole standard x86 architecture into something higher end. But then again it means no overclock. :)
P.S.--I just got my Abit Duron board yesterday
====
Crudely Drawn Games
If the 1.13GHz P3 was overclocked, then what about the 1GHz pre-Thunderbird Athlon? I think that it's just as possible that it was basically the same core as the 750. Personally, I hate companies that never stick to industry standards, and AMD has been added to this list.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
you just cannot simply use an Asus or Abit motherboard to do it. Instead, you need to connect 4 wires on to the resistors to the motherboard that provides multiplier adjustment, or if you have a board that have nothing on multiplier adjustment, connect those 4 wires to your own golden finger device.
If you're really hardcore overclocker, you still can do it. If one doesn't dare to do it, don't blame AMD. AMD did provide a way to get around, while protecting their business effectively.
A sig is redundant.
How'd you do that? Liquid nitrogen? Maybe that means that my Celeron 466 has some potential. However, it'll be running Windows 2000, so maybe I shouldn't.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
When Intel released the Pentium there was a huge trade in remarked Pentium chips.
:)
In my opinion the Pentium was a robust chip, but when an OEM was putting a remarked chip into a customers machine they might have been effectively reducing the MTBF of the device.
Whilst the majority of users will never know that they have been conned, (whats a few blue screens between windows anyway) the ones that do find out tend to do so after a terminal failure.
All this did is hurt the Intel trademark, whilst some users came to the conclusion that Intel chips inherently fail, other users realised that their chip was in fact remarked and they thought to themselves why isn't Intel doing anything to protect me as a consumer?
It turned out to be a double edged sword which hurt Intel.
I imagine that this phenomena has been a significant factor in the development of AMD's market share.
This is the reason that Intel released the 100Mhz pentium II's with a multiplier lock.
Now that AMD have managed to release high quality chips (shh be quiet you RISC zealots) which are capable of overclocking. They are facing the same scenario.
Its important to note that they aren't trying to put an end to enthusiast overclocking, they are trying to put an end to large scale remarking cartels.
PS:- I am not implying that overclocked chips are the cause of all bluescreens in Windows
I can understand that they'd be worried about unethical retailers. There seem to be a lot of them around. I'd think that they could come up with some method of verifying the chip's true speed without locking it, so the folks who like to do that sort of thing could still do it. AMD's in a great position to stomp Intel at the moment (as I've said before) but they really need to keep all the friends they can keep.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
WHen a company gets to s certian size, the suits begen getting more power over the engeneers.
To me it seems as if someone said, "well, we're serious competitors for Intel now, so lets be sure we maximize are dollar be preventing overclocking"
This is, of course, incredibly short sighted. If they bothered to see how many people overclock, and the purchases of people who over clock, they would have seen that aany impact on there bottom line would have been minimal.
If it wasn't for overclocking, I never would have heard of AMD.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can't see how you can argue that this is about product stability, chips don't get overclocked by accident, this is about AMD and Intel blocking chip remarking.
Those Wackos at AMD have done it this time! Now they're just some chip manufacturer who sells CPU that are better, clock-for-clock, than their Intel equivalents, for less money!
I don't know if I can continue to give them business in light of this news.
:-)
AMD, like Intel, doesn't give a rat's ass what you do to your own cpu. Burn it out? They don't care one way or another.
It's the grey market area that they want to stop. These shaddy OEMs, and local PC shops that like to OC a 600 chip to 800, then sell it off as a genuine 800mhz system. While the novice computer user that buys these secretly OC'ed systems isn't any the wiser.
What happens? Their cpu burns out way too eary, and when their computer stops working due to a dead cpu, they don't give any though out to OEM that sold it. The consumer just thinks that AMD makes crappy cpus, and will just get an Intel chip the next time.
So, I dont' blame one bit for AMD to stop as much as they can on OC'ing their chips. It's not to stop your or me from taking one of their chips up a few extra mhz. It's for the bonehead local OEMs from selling a Duron OC'ed to 850+ as a genuine 850+ chip. Which sadly to say, I've seen it done all too often.
Oh boy! Another overclocking article. This time around, let's observe a few rules of conduct.
1. No dropping snide comments about how all these overclocking chumps need to keep buying new CPUs because they burn them out. Ha Ha, I'm so clever.
2. No dropping snide comments about how all these non-overclocking chumps are paying extra to the Man. Ha Ha, I'm so 1337.
If we can avoid these posts maybe we'll get somewhere.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When Intel did this I said I would never buy anouther Intel chip again, and I have held true to that belief, but now that AMD is doing the same thing, I'm running out of places to buy decent chips. Its a shame, in the end AMD and Intel are the same.
If you spend less money on the slower chips and make them faster, in theory AMD is losing money.
It also allows you to stay on the trailing edge of technology by buying last year's chip and keeping it for as long as you would a new chip.
The final reason may just be a preemptive strike against returns/et.al. An o/c'd chip is more likely to show manufacturing defects, too.
I don't know if any of these reasons lose them money because they are creating brand loyalty by selling o'clockable chips and you will also buy a new one when the old one burns out.
IANAL, but I play one on
I have always wondered if a company A could make a chip with the same performance as company B, but send it out on the market at 100mhz faster than it's rival. (which would then be compared in price with company B's faster chip)
*COUGH* 1.13GHz PIII *COUGH*
2) they are pushing a bit too much on their new chips and don't wan't people to notice their "safety margin" is smaller?
This has nothing to do with it. The only way to judge the safty margin is stability and failure rate. The multiplier can always be figured out by dividing the rated chip speed by the FSB speed.
I'd wager the average overclocked system is more reliable than the comparable non-overclocked system. People that overclock (like myself) understand what is going on inside their systems, and make a point to take care of them.
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E2 IN2 IE?
There is more to bin sorting (determining CPU speed grades) than stability or other technical considerations.
Currently AMD is marking chips at LOWER than they are capable of running in nearly all cases due to marketing strategies, not technical limitations. AMD's K7 class chips (Athlons and Durons) are known to run stably at higher speeds, but AMD is biding it's time and keeping this headroom available for the coming mindshare fights with Intel's Pentium IV.
This is smart for AMD. The top chip, whatever speed it is, will sell for about the same price. So they can sell the lower clocked chip until Intel is able to counter with something with a faster clock speed. When that happens, AMD just changes the speed marking on the the chips they are already producing.
Yes, technical concerns are a limiting factor on chip speed ratings, but they are not the operative one for AMD right now.
Tastes Like Chicken
Why don't chip manufacturers like AMD and Intel simply put an instruction in the CPU that can be called to get internal information about the chip? (e.g. Company, intended clock speed, etc.) This especially goes for Intel, seeing as how they've already done it for serial #'s.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Would be to burn the CPU spec in some kind of ROM on the CPU. I know intel puts some scrach ROM on their chips for info, and both of them have CISC->Microcode lookup tables on their chips. Return that number with some of the other CPU-ID stuff. Instaid of "Athlon 800" the system would say "Athlon spect @ 700mhz (Overclocked to 800)" at boot.
Bios's could even be set up to display a warning if the chip is running out of spec.
Anyway, I doubt that Remarking is really what the chip-makers are worried about. I'm sure AMD would rather have us pay the $500 for an Athlon 900 then get a Duron 600, overclock it to a Ghz and get the same performace for a tenth the cost. Sure, these chips would cheap if AMD just gave them away, but I think they are more intrested in making money then being good semaritans.
I ordered my Duron 600 today, I hope I get a good one, but if I don't, I won't be to pissed, I only paid $50 for it, I certanly wouldn't think of myself as stealing anything if I can run it faster. I havn't got any money at all, and I couldn't afford to get a highpowered athlon. but if I could, I still wouldn't if AMD didn't pull these pins.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I don't think AMD is the major chip-maker that marks up their 850 MHz chips for competition purposes!
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I'm planning to upgrade soon. I was going to go AMD. I thought they would be hoping to catch the techy market => overclocking, and upgrades on the same motherboard, maybe other stuf I hadn't thought of. Obviously they decided theres more money to be made without this, so I dont see much of an advantage over Intel. When I have such a bad choice of motherboards to go with a new AMD my choice is pretty much made. Anyway I was feeling a bit guilty not buying Intel, they're one of the big local employers about here.
The submitter read the article wrong. AMD hasn't blocked overclocking. What they've done is re-locked the front-side bus multiplier on their chips.
This renders the AMD Duron supporting just as much overclocking as your favorite Intel CPU. Before this, they were _more_ overclockable.
Remember, Intel just got burned a few weeks ago (remember the 1.13 G pIII recall?) by pretty much deliberately overclocking chips that couldn't take it. So, it really shouldn't come as any surprise that AMD would do some testing, figure out how fast these chips can run SAFELY, and then take steps to ensure that they run at those safe speeds.
Sure, they might lose a bit of favor with the geek crowd, but the money, especially concerning the Duron, is in run-of-the-mill discount PCs. Having them stay sturdy does a lot for AMD's bottom line. All hail the dollar!
You can just buy a goldfinger sort of thingy like you can get from athlonoc.com store. You just crack open the ahtlon case and there is a handy little slot for the goldfinger to go onto. You just set the settings and you are good to go.
"I INSTALLED LUNIX AND FPROTTED HIS TARBALL!!!!!@#"
You knoe this idiotic rant would be much better if you knew what your where talking about...
Smart oc'ers (which you don't seem to be one of) have already discussed thsi since a rumor hit over a month ago that this might take place. A week ago I came across a new write up on how to unlock a Duron or Athlon without the bridges on the surface of the chip.
Even if that wasn't the case athlon supporting mobo's ahve been getting better and more stable. What does that mean? Well that means I've seen some people get socket A boards to a 133 (266 DDR) FSB speed. Which would make some nice Duron oc'ing (600 to 798 for instance)...
How about buying a clue before posting 'k?
(PS I wasn't in a good mood while posting this so if it's a bit flamy you knwo why)
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I know this is rare, but when I bought a Athlon 750, it was DOA, no overclocking. The second overclocks just fine. :)
Yeah, the people who have been using intel chips have had to overclock like this for a while.
Ok. I'm entering the fray quite late and nobody will pay attention to this post.. but it has to be said..
with AMD and Intel, this whole MHz race is bullshit. There is no *real* advancement in technology when all these guys are doing is tweaking these old technologies to run faster.
But its this "hype" about MHz, driven mostly by you stupid overclockers, that keep AMD and Intel locked in this MHz race that makes everyone lose.
I mean, go look at MIPS who actually give a hoot about decent design - their R12k 400MHz is twice as fast as a PIII 800MHz at seti! And go check out PPC's Altivec, which is pretty much MMX except 10 times better.
But of course, the rest of the world seems to neglect these achievements in computing, and think that more MHz == better. WRONG. Go have a look at SPEC and see the current trend which shows that even though intel and AMD are making their chips run at a higher MHz, the performance gains really aren't that much.
So, we have this whole overclocking and MHz frenzy, which is basically driven by a bunch of clueless kiddies who believe that making a 5 year old technology run at a fast clock rate is the be all and end all of chip fabrication.
pfft
Wow, are you kidding? about a dual Celeron system beating a Duron? Mostly depends on what your running. If your talking about games, not that many games run well on Win2K or Linux, also most games dont utilize both processors so the Duron would win out Clockwise and just plain performance wise.
No you won't. The Duron 700 MHz beats the Celeron 566@850 MHz, go take a look at the benchmarks at Anandtech. Don't waste your money on a crappy but overclockable Celeron, even overclocked they can't beat a Duron.
Folks,
While some of you folks want to overclock the heck out of the CPU, have you all considered that there are other ways to speed up your computer?
How about installing more RAM and a faster hard drive? Getting more RAM into a computer can make a BIG difference, especially in graphical environments. And definitely get a 7200 RPM ATA-66 hard drive, too, because you want to be able to read and write data on the hard drive faster.
In my personal opinion, once CPU's went past 500 MHz in speed, for most home users they would be better served by getting as much RAM as they can afford and making sure the system has a decently fast hard drive.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
This may be a bit off-subject, but.. I have one of the original Athlon 700's and an Abit KA7 mobo, but I can't set the multiplier. Does the processor have a multplier lock on it or is the the mobo that does.. and is there any (easy) way to go around that without speeding up the fsb.
"While the novice computer user that buys these secretly OC'ed systems isn't any the wiser."
If the OEM modifies the chip or runs it out of spec, AMD is absolved if the chip fails. Consumers need to hold vendors accountable to the claims _they_ make. If the vendor says their computer (regardless of chip) will run for 1 year without crashing, whether it does or doesn't is their problem. Whether they overclock the CPU or whatever is between them and their bottom line.
Why do people look to big entities like God, The Government, and AMD to protect them from loss? You're the only one who can protect you, and even that's not guarenteed. It's just as greedy of the consumer to expect a purchase to include more than it claims as it is for the vendor to run hardware out of spec.
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I think AMD is trying to protect its brandname by making it as difficult as possible to make their chips unstable, but I also think they are fighting a futile battle. Oh well.
As this post points out, they are also making it more difficult for shady vendors to sell o/c'd chips as though they were actually the faster ones.
IANAL, but I play one on
AMD right now is hurting a little because a LOT of people are returning chips that have "gone bad". Now, do you think the chips really just "GO BAD" or do you think they're overclocking their chips??
AMD needs to save money to beat out Intel. I love AMD, and if they think they need to disable the OverClocking of their chips to stay ahead of intel, so be it.
Plus now the chip differences in price are praticly nothing. You can afford a 900MHz T-Bird these days!!!!
AMD is doing everything they can to get us the best chips possiable and keep compitition with Intel realistic.
I have always had Celerons (3 of them now) and have had very good overlocking success with them. A 300A@450, 400@600, and currently a 566@933. The price of the processor with a speed that mathces the speed I have overclocked to before and currently, for example 933MHz, will usually be out of my reach financially and AMD's action by crippling overclocking, automatilly lost me as a potential customer and will not make me buy my desired speed processor at full price as opposed to what I think I can take a cheaper chip to overclock to based on reviews and such. After reading so many positive results on AMD's Athlons and Durons, I was primed to go the AMD route but not anymore. I was thinking that AMD at least could have made more customers by allowing overclocking still so we would invest in socket A motherboards and therefore, kinda lock us up in an AMD upgrade path for future processors. But after this news, my Celeron still looks as appealing as the first day I laid my hands on a 400 overclocking to 600 and my current 566@933@1.75volts is still chugging along rock solidly. =)
I am not an expert on the subject, but i have always felt that the potential for overclocking was what the margin between the maximum working speed of the chip - this is known by the company (Intel, Amd, etc.) - and the speed at which the chip is running "comfortably".
.sig
I have always wondered if a company A could make a chip with the same performance as company B, but send it out on the market at 100mhz faster than it's rival. (which would then be compared in price with company B's faster chip)
I mean, if the "safety margin" is subjective and there are no standards, how can i compare company A and B's chips?
And when AMD removes it's multiplier, how can i know if it is because:
1) they are loosing money on overclockers - really?
2) they are pushing a bit too much on their new chips and don't wan't people to notice their "safety margin" is smaller?
Actually, I don't know that much in hardware, so I could be totally wrong. Correct me if necessary...
phobos% cat
phobos% cat
cat:
"Knowing is half the battle."
- G.I. Joe
Fuck Slashdot
Frankly, if I spend $500+ bucks for a processors, I'd be less inclined to take risks with it. Cheap processors on the other hand make it easier for us to experiment because if we burn one up it's no great loss and replacing it isn't a wallet-emptier.
When I spend a lot of money on a CPU specifically for performance, I tend to lean towards the reliability of it's stated speed rather than the risk and relative unreliability of overclocking - after all, I've already got performance. But if I want to see just how far I can push a CPU - well, I expect unreliability and I expect to crater some chips. That's part of the fun...
Mike