Research Reveals Mislaid Microprocessor Megahertz

SlashRating^© 6*10^23 slashdottit! ^tm ransom1982 noted a new article on The Register that says "Not only are chip companies regularly releasing ever-faster microprocessors, but new research has revealed that modern CPUs actually lose megahertz over time." This makes it even more complicated to compare the performance of Intel and AMD CPUs since you have differing architecture, clockspeeds AND the year of manufacture to consider. Buyer beware!

Comments

The sad thing is...

[Khaed]

This one wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be true, because sometimes I certainly feel like my processor is degrading...

Re:The sad thing is...

[ColdWetDog]

You computer guys are all alike. No balls. We car guys don't whine about our wheels going slower, we just get out the drill and polish and start working. The trick is to take weight off the vehicle by drilling out any unnecessary metal. That's called "adding lightness".

Even geeky guys can do this. And you don't need a real drill, just a dremel tool. Just start drilling holes in those IC's, you soon see the flames roar out! Smoke! Speed!

Works like a charm. Even works for Windows.

Re:The sad thing is...

[Sigma 7]

This one wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be true, because sometimes I certainly feel like my processor is degrading...

It is true. Processors don't live forever, and will eventually die from entropy - hence some retailers and manufacturer's selling extended warranties to cover the period between 1-3 years where it's not likely to have noticable problems.

The rate at which Mhzs are lost does vary - if you run DOS, you can be sure that MHzs would be working at optimum capacity as there's isn't more than 1 task wearing away the ability of the processor.

When the processor malfunctions or finally dies, that means it's lost too many MHzs to contine operating. It may simply stop working, develop the Pentium division bug (or some other interesting event), or some other symptom. Some people compensated by overclocking the chip to recover these MHz - but removing the heat sink caused these MHz to spew out so rapidly that it blew a hole in the mainboard.

Re:The sad thing is...

[Smidge204]

Yeah, they just don't build 'em like they used to. I remember when I got my first Pentium system back in the late 1990s, the cache pipeline burst and I spent that whole evening picking bits out of the carpet.

=Smidge=

Is this another April fool's story?

[andy314159pi]

I'm too dumb to figure out if this is an April fools joke or not.

Slashdottit

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Ever notice how the slashdottit number is 1 mole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit) ? 6 * 10^23 thats great

El Reg at the weekend?

[jd3nn1s]

To me the giveaway was El Reg posting new articles at the weekend :)

OMG!!! Ponies!!!

[nbritton]

1. Download: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/217 5
2. Tools > Add-ons > Slashdotter > Options.
3. Click on styles tab, than change 'Default style'.
4. ???
5. OMG!!! Ponies!!!

So if your lose megahertz's wouldn't that screw up the RTC calculations?

Now it is my turn

[houghi]

I should be modded insightful for no reason.

Re:Now it is my turn

[uchihalush]

What about me?

How about Interesting?

Hey it works!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I thought parent was posting bullshit, but though what the heck let's try this.... except I didn't want to screw up hardware so I thought I'd take a stab at lightening Windows. I went into the Windows directory and truncated a few DLLs to make them lighter.

Well who would have expected it... Windows BSODs much faster than it used to!