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Remarked Celerons Sold As P4s
Lam1969 writes "Sumner Lemon reports that a Chinese company, Shenzhen Chuanghui Electronics Co., is remarking Celeron chips as Pentium 4s and supplying software to mask the chips' real pedigree from operating systems. From the article : 'The remarked processors Chuanghui sells are actually 1.7-GHz Celeron chips and are currently available for $78 each, including a motherboard, in quantities of 100 or more, said James Zhan, a company representative named online as a contact for potential buyers. By comparison, Intel sells the real thing for $401 in 1,000-unit quantities without a motherboard, according to the company's most recent price list.'"
50 years ago Chuanghui Genuine Gold Jewelry Company was stamping "14K" into brass jewelry. The enclosed warranty assured the buyer that "any discoloration of flesh is sometimes maybe."
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Next, ask them what's the difference between a Socket 478 and an LGA775. How long would it take until someone on the street can answer this?
In fact, I wouldn't be able to answer this question right now, and I'm a programmer/sysadmin who sets up several servers per year. We simply have hardware people, and I get a ready box where my intervention doesn't exceed attaching a disk.
Of course, the last time I built a computer myself, a P2-era Celeron 300A oc/ed to 375, I researched such issues. But nowadays, I simply don't have time to deal with the hardware -- other people are paid to do that. I wouldn't notice the scam in the article unless I happen to glance at the messages during a system boot or notice the discrepancy while resolving some driver problem (non-Windows), or somehow notice that the system is way slower than it should be.
So... if an experienced person who just doesn't deal with hardware wouldn't spot this scam on the first glance, how would a layman get it?
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If your company purchases volume quantities of electronic components, or depends on suppliers that do, you need to be aware of what is happening in the Shenzen area of China. It has become a hotbed of counterfeit components and other criminal activity. Guangdong is another region of China where this is happening. The Chinese government appears to be doing little or nothing to interfere. Many companies pop up just long enough to do a couple of shady deals and then vanish.
Our company buys wholesale quantities of electronic components, occasionally (but warily) from the Shenzen region of China. We have received re-marked and counterfeit parts which are accurate enough to get by our modest QA process. In one instance, a military customer of ours discovered a very expensive counterfeit part via industrial X-Ray before mounting it on their boards. As a result, we lost face with a good customer and had to take legal action to get our money back from our stateside supplier. Our supplier was stuck with the bill, as they purchased/imported the parts from Shenzen.
What ever you do, never pay up front. This sounds like a no brainer, but these people will feed on the buyer's desperation. If they won't accept NET 1 terms, then run away. Once a deal goes bad, you have no legal recourse. Buyer Beware.
But the sales department comes to you with a sad face. You made 85,000 3.4 GHz CPU's, but they have orders for only 1,000 of those, the rest of the orders are for 2GHz chips.
Guess what they tell you to do?: Run out to the asemmbly line and quickly push the buttons to label and blow the chip fuses so they advertise themselves as the lower speed grade. Seems like a waste, but it keeps the customers and accountants happy.
Happens all the time. I recently bought a batch of "300 volt" transistors. On the tester they all measured out at 650 to 670 volts.
So there's a *slight* chance these guys have a batch of underlabeled CPU's.
On another note, how do they plan to mask it on non-Windows OSs.
I saw this in the article:
"Chuanghui handles the remarking of the Celeron chips itself, Zhan said. In addition, the company provides buyers with software that masks the identify of the remarked Celerons from a computer's BIOS and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, fooling the software into believing the chip is actually a 3.6-GHz Pentium 4 processor, he said."
So, this explains why they're selling it with the motherboard, as it's a major component of the scam: they're masking the chip's speed at the BIOS level, probably with some sort of hack to the mobo's BIOS. The interesting thing, then is that any CPUID program would probably misdetect the chip, regardless of the OS. But put the chip into another motherboard, and you'd probably detect the correct chip type.
At least, that was my impression. -- Paul
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You know I could get a bunch of these, set up at the flea market put one on the counter, opened up and put a sign on it celeron 1.7 GHz; people would see the remarked chip and think I was some moron that they could rip-off. When word got a round a bit, these things would be flyiing off the shelf, each one invoiced as celeron 1.7GHz!
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