----- Original Message ----- From: "Benjamin Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Greater NH Linux Users' Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 10:05 PM Subject: AMD vs Intel (was: Hardware Pointers)
> On 21 Apr 2002, at 3:38pm, Rich Cloutier wrote: > > 1. If your heatsink falls off or your CPU fan dies, the processor just > > slows down and stops. I doesn't die like AMD processors do. > > If the CPU fan dies, or you power-on without a heatsink, an AMD system > should halt safely. The "heatsink falls off" case is real. SHOULD, but doesn't. I have talked to numerous OEMs of AMD processors and motherboards, and they have told me many stories of idiots who have installed their Athlon and Duron CPUs and powered the motherboards up without a heat sink, "just to see if they worked" and have fried in some cases 3 CPUs in a row. > > AMD considers the over-temp protection function to be the job of the > motherboard, not the CPU. I -- and pretty much the rest of the world -- > disagree, but that is the way it is (for now, anyway). For the "heatsink > falls off" scenario, the sensor/monitor AMD provided in their reference > design does not react fast enough, resulting catastrophic, permanent failure > of the chip package -- i.e., it literally burns up. If the fan dies, or you > power-on without a heatsink, the temperature rise is (in theory) slow enough > that the monitoring electronics can see the problem and kill the power > before any permanent damage occurs. Supposedly, AMD is working with > motherboard OEMs to create a better sensor/monitor design which can react > fast enough for all scenarios. If the fan dies, you get a slow rise in temperature which should cause the current circuitry to work. However, powering the chip on with no heatsink is not really any different than removing the heatsink from a running processor. The core and substrate are not nearly massive enough to dissipate the heat generated. The only advantage you MIGHT get is the difference between normal operating temperature (40 degrees C or so) and room temperature. The article referenced below: http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/heatvideo-01.html mentions that the processors smoke and reach temps of over 300C within seconds: "Those pictures cannot show you what happened by far as good as our test-lab video. A split second after the heat sink had been taken off the Palomino-Athlon, the system crashed. We then watched in horror as smoke clouds rose from the overheating core. The temperature measurement ensured us of what we had feared. No semiconductor survives almost 300 degrees Celsius / 580 degrees Fahrenheit. Palomino was dead." 15 degrees is a very small part of THAT temperature curve. AMD IS working on a solution: http://www6.tomshardware.com/column/01q4/011029/index.html but there is still a large number of motherboards on the market without this feature. > > Note: This is all based on what I have read online from various sites. I > only have one AMD Athlon, which I paid good money for, and I am not about to > test it by pulling the heatsink off while it is running. ;-) (I'm not > about to do it for the Intel PIII I'm typing this on, either.) Nor am I. But I feel better knowing that if my fan dies or my socket cracks, my CPU is likely to survive the ordeal. > > > 2. There don't seem to be too many chipset choices for AMD processors > > besides VIA ... > > VIA, SIS, ALI, and AMD all make chipsets for the K7 (Athlon/Duron) series. > > > ... based on MY experience and those of others I have read, VIA are not > > the best chipset manufacturers out there. > > My analysis of the situation has not so much been that the chipsets stink, > but that some motherboard OEMs do a lousy job of integrating them. There is > a lot more flexibility of design in the AMD world. Since AMD's products > have a lower price, there also tend to be a lot more "entry-level products" > (read: cheap pieces of junk) in the AMD world. The result is that there is > a much greater opportunity to buy a lemon. Well then the junk manufacturers use VIA for Intel solutions too, because I have had problems with all the VIA motherboards I have used, regardless of platform. > > As with Linux, more available choices means more bad choices as well as > more good choices. I still prefer choice. > > > 3. With Intel, you NEVER have to worry if there is a software comatibility > > issue. > > Bull. Remember the F00F bug? How about the FDIV bug? There are others, > too. All chips have bugs, including Intel's. > > If you want, you can declare "whatever Intel's chips do is correct", but > you can do that for AMD, too. It is a pissing contest either way. Bugs is one thing. How fast the workarounds are created is another. True, it is a perception issue, but it's still important. If you don't agree, go ask the folks from Cyrix. > > What really matters is, "Can you get your work done?" Both brands provide > a "yes" answer in nearly every case (with the errata being evenly > distributed for both as well). The errata is masked by the fact that most people use Windows. Server admins mostly use Intel. > > > The prices of equivalently perfoming Athlons are generally cheaper than > > Intel P4, although this could change in the coming weeks with Intel's > > recent and upcoming price cuts. > > Back in the days when RAMBUS was your only option for the P4, the > price/performance ratio for an AMD Athlon solution was about twice that of > the Intel P4. In other words, for a given amount of cash, you could buy > twice as much AMD system as you could Intel system. Now that Intel has > decided that RAMBUS was a Bad Idea(TM), P4 SDR and DDR SDRAM solutions have > leveled the playing field. The fact that Dell is selling P4 systems at what > has to be below cost helps, too. :-) > RAMBUS isn't a bad idea. It was a Bad Decision(TM) in that it was a proprietary architecture (read expensive) and it was ahead of it's time. The P4s of the day were not fast enough to utilize the available memory bandwidth. Now of course they are, and, only with the advent of DDR400 has that solution actually surpassed the 850's memory performance numbers. The other issue is overclocking. Most people don't overclock, and would not do so. But the fact that you CAN overclock an Intel processor much more than an AMD processor says a lot for the "overhead" that these processors have in terms of stability and reliability. Rich Cloutier President, C*O SYSTEM SUPPORT SERVICES www.sysupport.com ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
