AMD And THG update

Mhrmnhrm writes "In the interests of responsible journalism, the gang over at Tom's Hardware has developed this article in the interests of setting the record straight about their original AMD burn-out video, and the new release (possibly from AMD) of this past week. It would seem that BOTH videos are correct, and that the question of whether or not somebody is hiding something depends entirely upon your own point of view."

Comments

Good Work Tom's

[MrBlack]

I say good work to 'em. It seems THG was correct all along, but I couldn't detect the faintest sense of gloating or grandstanding in their article. They've pointed out a fairly big problem with some of AMD's chips, AMD have responded with new info to MOBO manufacturers (who will no doubt consider this new feature fairly important after the attention the orriginal article on THG received). Great. No threats of legal action by either side (AFAIK), no finger pointing, no FUD. Now if everyone could behave like this......

better than a shutdown

[Cynikal]

it should be integrated into the cmos to choose if you want to shut off the power instantly, or throttle the cpu to a lower speed and managable temp to let the system shut down properly. I'm sure a 1.5GHz cpu could function at a low temp if reset to a 66mhz bus (or even 33) and lower multiplier, just enough power to save any data and exit gracefully.

then again, isnt that what intel got bashed for doing with their p4? i'm not sure on the specifics of the why's how's and when's of p4's power throttle, all i remember is people pointing at p4 and saying "bad". Doesnt sound so bad now tho.

I imagine the most important point to any failsafe like that is letting the user know clearly why exactly their computer shut down, or is running incredibly slow. maybe having the soundcard play some 70's pron music in the background would be a good enough indication that something is getting too hot? :P

No big deal

[Mathness]

Several things strike me as odd about this "news" (2nd article) and the first article which spawned it.

-"Siemens assured us that the thermal protection circuitry is definitely working on their motherboard." (1st article)
Well, it did not work anyway, whoops. And therefore AMD must be at fault here?

-"We rushed to the telephone to confer with Siemens. The engineers assured us that what we had seen was for real. The thermal diode of Palomino is unable to react quickly enough. Only 1 degree/s is what the thermal diode is able to handle." (1st article)
Okay, they check with Siemens. Why not have a chat with AMD? If the thermal diode can only work this slow, why can the AMD engineers make a working shutdown with a common electrical component?

-"AMD showed us how all Palomino CPUs could be protected against overheating with relatively little effort." (2nd article)
Wonder why Siemens could not make this? They where the ones who claimed that the MB would protect againt meltdown, and that it worked. AMD said that the thermal diode worked. And showed it on a modified MB, which have no protection from the start.

THG is making a big fuss, about a somewhat minor problem. And THG was too biased against AMD, I can only hope I was biased enough the other way ;)

And what is up with this "We saved the hardware manufactors and you" theme in the 2nd article?
Are they losing commercial revenue?

Re:and in the end it doesn't really matter

[De Lemming]

However, AMD should have designed the safety circuit they have shown off in the article INTO the actual CPU itself, so it can save itself. And it should save itself by basically clocking itself down to 100MHz or slower, so that data loss does not occur and the user can save their data. Hopefully this will be implemented in a future revision of the CPU.

It would be very nice to have such a feature, but this will require a rather large redesign. Remember the Palomino is based on the Thunderbird. Intel designed the P4 from the ground up...

And if AMD implements such a feature, they shouldn't make the mistake Intel did. If the cpu is lowering the clockspeed internally, this should be clearly communicated to the outside world (the bios), so the user is aware of this.

Underclocking to the rescue?

[Anonymous Bullard]

While I've followed the Athlon performance discussions with no little amount of awe, I've been frustrated by the heat issues and the related power consumption. Due to reasons beyond my control, heat, relatively speaking, is an environmental issue where I work. Humongous HFC's aren't the ideal solution to this problem IMO.

Recently I've started pondering whether it would be possible to take one of the newer Palominos (eXPee+ series Athlon) and underclock it (e.g. from 1,333Mhz to 1Ghz or even lower) via the multiplier and voltage while keeping the external bus speeds (which aren't part of the heat problem) intact or even slightly overclocked.

Has anyone studied the underclocking opportunities of Palominos with the latest mainboards? Waiting for the move to a 13 micron silicon-on-insulator process is starting to get on my nerves. ;-) VIA's latest C3 (800Mhz) looks technically "cool" but it understandably lacks DDR support and tick-for-tick its performance still sucks compared to the K7 designs by AMD.

Also, does anyone know if the upcoming "finer" Athlons will be compatible with the mainboards on sale today?

Or should I just give up on AMD and go for a P4 when the DDR-boards become available?

Just as it should be

[gotan]

I read the first article and was quite impressed by the P4's performance of just going on at a slower clockrate. I also found it quite informative, that an Athlon might not only fry itself, but also the motherboard or even start a fire. The point is quite valid, that the heatsink might fall off during transport (although i suppose one would hear the loose heatsink rattling in the case) and will take a little more care with present CPU/Mobo combinations.

Let's not forget, that the throttling technique got some critique when it became known, mainly because the user wouldn't know about it, and it seemed a cheap way for intel to resolve heat problems with the P4. Toms article showed, that the throttling is quite a good feature to have (it would be even better, if there was a way of notifying the user without counting clockticks). So the first thing i thought after reading Toms first article was: "will AMD something similar, and when?". Now the followup shows, that AMD is aware of the problem, and is willing to spend some effort to offer solutions.

While the Motherboard-solution is more like a quick hack useful enough for present boards and AMD-CPUs, i expect something built into the CPU next time (at least a sudden shutdown should be possible, altering clockspeed at runtime might be a different story, and probably takes some haggling about patented technology with intel).

In conclusion i think things are as they should be: the test has made AMD aware of the fact, that protecting the CPU from overheating is a feature customers want, and they set to work on it and offered a quick solution after a few weeks. Noone tried to ban the story from toms site and people actually got together and talked about the problem without shifting responsibility around.

I still think the Athlon has the better bang for the buck, but i won't mind shelling out a little more money for a mobo with overheat protection.