Why Pentium?

[Mxsmanic]

Well, for general office use but lets not exaggerate too much. There are
still plenty of things business does where computing power makes a
difference, like CAD, modeling, and animation just to name a few.

Only a very tiny minority of business users are running such exotica.
A lot of machines never run much more than Outlook, Excel, Word, and
Internet Explorer.

 

[Mxsmanic]

That's a very limited view of "business computing". As a broad category,
e.g., decision support systems can do some very heavy duty calculations,
whether it be financial analysis or strategic & tactical planning for any
part of a manufacturing business.

Virtually no one is doing decision support, and many executives can
hardly understand e-mail, much less any other computer application.

As a general rule, the higher the rank, the more a PC is for looks
rather than work. The actual horsepower requirement shrinks, but the
desire to look good with a fancy and recent computer expands.

 

[Mxsmanic]

And I preferred the intel cpus just because
they were generally quieter for quite a while too.

Do you have any feel for fan life on boxed Intel CPUs? I presume they
use fans of reasonable quality, but I'd prefer to think that they use
fans of very high quality.

And the most demanding game I play is Freecell Pro.

_The Sims 2_ is the one that puts the most load on my machine. It
does okay as long as there aren't too many Sims on the screen,
otherwise the frame rate drops a bit. The video card makes a huge
difference.

 

[Mxsmanic]

That's a good point because 'locked up' doesn't necessarily mean the
processor quit doing something, just not something 'intelligent', nor that
it quit consuming power.

True. And if the AMDs had just done that, I might still have them.

In these cases, though, I smelled a strong burnt smell when I walked
into the room, and some parts of the motherboard had been deformed or
discolored by heat. Clearly, these processors had overheated far too
much. They still worked, for a while, but then lots of highly
unbelievable errors started to crop up when I used the machines. When
I saw that they were increasing in number and occurring in the most
improbable places (the OS and programs that had run for years without
errors), I realized the processor was failing. Within a day or two,
the failures were so frequent that it couldn't get through POST. So I
replaced the machine ... with Intel. The price difference was
trivial, especially compared to the money I lost when the old machine
cooked.

 

[Mxsmanic]

That is a reason to more carefully scrutinize the failure
point, which was not an AMD processor but another factor
like fan or grease failure, chassis cooling problems.

The CPU fan failed. The AMD processor had no provision for overtemp
protection, and heated up until it burned its own socket and the
motherboard. That would not have happened if it had been an Intel
processor.

One should never buy a system with the idea that one of the
basic fundamental needs will fail and thus Intel's
last-resort shutdown would matter.

If it had been an Intel processor, I would have saved $1000 in
hardware replacement costs. Intel's last-resort shutdown would have
made all the difference. I could have just bought a $5 fan and
continued on my way.

Certainly that shutdown
feature is better than NOT having one, but it is not
something that should be among primary considerations in any
remotely normal system, selection.

I lost two systems to AMD's lack of that feature. I'm not going to
lose any more, which is why I run Intel now. AMD had its chance and
blew it. It will be a long time before I trust them again. I don't
care how fast their processors are.

I suggest that you drew the wrong conclusion.

See above. It was exactly the right and logical conclusion. AMD =
$1000 replacement cost. Intel = $5 replacement cost.

A system built with an Intel CPU but same problem the AMD one had, is
not trouble-free either.

I don't expect it to be trouble-free, but I don't want it to
self-destruct.

You saw the result of the problem as a focal point instead
of the cause.

It _was_ the focal point. See above.

Whatever that AMD
CPU was, that it was a past generation CPU is a sign that
many alternatives from either manufacturer produce more heat
today, we can't just write-off the AMDs as hot-running, and
contrary to urban myth, many Intel alternatives actually had
a higher TDP but merely idled cooler.

I don't know if the CPU was normally hot-running or not. I know that
it was a serious fire hazard. It could have set the room on fire
instead of just burning the motherboard.

Put the $ towards the problem instead.

I did: I bought a processor that shuts down if it overheats.

If it overheats the problem was the cooling system or
maintenance (lack of) towards cleaning out dust, replacing poor
thermal compound, or relubing junk fans (if for some reason
it isn't viable to replace them with good quality fans instead).

Irrelevant. The fan failed when I wasn't there to replace anything.
The processor nearly set the machine on fire, and ruined the PC. The
lack of overtemp protection in the processor was the direct cause of
this. I have now plugged this hole by buying a processor with
overtemp protection, from Intel.

I owe no loyalty to AMD. Their processor cost me a fortune--as much
as a boxful of Intel processors--and I don't plan to make the same
mistake twice.

Not at all. Many popular benchmarks make a ridiculous
assumption that one would only run a few of the premier
applications, newest versions of those. How many people do
you know that pay thousands of dollars every time a newer
version of their apps come out? Most people don't, only
getting newer versions when it happened to ship with their
new OEM system (which tends not to have premier apps on it
at all, except perhaps MS Office).

Most people already have more horsepower than they will ever need for
anything except games. They don't need benchmarks or faster
processors.

Take the typical apps of a few years ago and even Athlon XP
beat the P4 though online benchmarks suggested P4 beat it
most of the time (towards the end of the Athlon XP era at
least).

Normal users don't care.

In fact, if vendors were willing to sell their older models of
processors at dirt-chip prices, they could sell quite a few, since a
lot of people would cheerfully buy a really inexpensive PC, and it
would still be enough for anything they might have in mind.

 

[Mxsmanic]

As is usually the case, the CPU is just one of many pieces in the
puzzle. It's performance CAN have an impact though, even for personal
desktop systems. Mind you, the exact measure of "performance" is not
always something that a benchmark will show you. These days I'm
recommend dual-core chips to pretty much everyone looking for a
desktop system, not because they'll finish a benchmark faster, but
because they'll make the system much more responsive.

No, they won't. The major delay in response time on a typical desktop
comes from disk drive access time, not any lack of performance in the
CPU. If the system is connected to a network, network delays may be
even worse, and CPU speed still won't matter.

Additionally, even if you have a blazingly fast CPU, you need very
fast memory to get full performance from it. Cache is not a
substitute for fast memory.

 

[Mxsmanic]

I think you're underestimating the average computer user. People DO
notice differences in performance.

Yes, they do ... but CPU speed is not the bottleneck in a typical
desktop system.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Then you choose to promote system downtime, failures. If
the system is designed properly the odds of the shutdown
feature being needed are too remote to be realistically
considered.

No, the odds of it being needed are 100% if the machine is run long
enough, because eventually all mechanical cooling systems (such as
fans) fail. Without overtemp protection, a CPU fan failure will
destroy the machine; with it, the machine will stop until the fan can
be replaced.

 

[kony]

Let's do an experiment, shall we? Given my audience here, I'll try to dumb
this down as much as I can.

You specify a fan that you are sure will run for 5 years without failure.
I'll buy 10 of them, and connect them to a test fixture. This test fixture
will supply 12 volts to all 10 of the fans; for the sake of argument,
let's say that the 12 volts is infallible. There is a circuit (also
infallible) that monitors the RPM of all 10 fans, and will output a signal
that triggers a radio transmitter upon any one of the fans having failed.
This radio transmitter sends a special encrypted signal that activates a
small explosive device that has been embedded in your walnut-sized brain.

While this may have little effect on your cognitive abilities (such as
they are) will you take the challenge?

Of course not, I have no faith at all in your infallible
power if you can't even keep fans running, BUT, I'd sooner
risk that than risk that if you had 10 CPUs overheating,
that the thermal shutdown will keep all of them working for
5 years.

 

[kony]

Any CPU will burn up if it loses all external cooling, so providing
for CPU shutdown if the temperature climbs too high makes perfect
sense, and is an essential feature.

Actually Intel's CPUs can and have burnt up _with_ their CPU
shutdown feature if they lose all external cooling (the
heatsink) and are powered on from cold off. The diode can't
always reach fast enough to cover this.

That doesn't make it an essential feature at all, but for
another more obvious reason. Systems ran for years without
it- if it had been essential, they could not have done so.
Any CPU since the early Pentium days needed a 'sink, and
most active cooling (or carefully engineered passive cooling
via chassis airflow, same diff.), or would fail, yet they
ran fine. It was not essential nor is it now.

That doesn't make it a bad idea, it seems Rod would like to
imply I meant that even after stating otherwise multiple
times. What it does mean, and what got the thread all
boated out of proportion, is that it is no substitute for
forethought about reliable cooling, that a cooling system
failure during the lifetime of the system is cause for
reassessment of that design.

 

[kony]

It was very easy to build an AMD based system that was
quieter than Intel w/Intel-retail sink-fan combination.

Intel's fans from the celeron and P2 era were not very quiet
considering the CPUs did't produce much heat. Their P3 fans
should have been deemed defective because they all started
making high pitched bearing whine noise after a few months.
We shelved most P3 heatsinks because of this, replaced with
aftermarket 'sinks. I still have a few brand new P3 'sinks
lying around too, they didn't get reused as much as most
other 'sinks because of that oddball stepped base on the
metal and the plastic level-clips.

Do you have any feel for fan life on boxed Intel CPUs? I presume they
use fans of reasonable quality, but I'd prefer to think that they use
fans of very high quality.

They buy fans from manufacturers that make "normal" fans of
high quality. These fan manufacturers spend a great deal of
time (all actually, it IS their core business) engineering
fans then Intel comes along and wants their own special spec
which is a degraded function fan over what the manufacturer
already had. Nidec and Sanyo Denki are the main two, both
making good stock fans and both worse after re-spec'd.

_The Sims 2_ is the one that puts the most load on my machine. It
does okay as long as there aren't too many Sims on the screen,
otherwise the frame rate drops a bit. The video card makes a huge
difference.

Lots of high bandwidth memory helps it too.

 

[kony]

Yes, they do ... but CPU speed is not the bottleneck in a typical
desktop system.

I used to think that too, but I've seen too many
grandmothers plopping pictures in their 2400x2400 scanners,
then firing up their auto-everything photoediting app that
chokes on processing a 200MB image.

Granted, the average job(s) done on a PC are not CPU bound,
but at the same time the average jobs aren't memory bound,
or even hard drive bound. The user is the bottleneck on a
typical desktop system.

 

[kony]

No, they won't. The major delay in response time on a typical desktop
comes from disk drive access time,

If the system has been recently booted and/or doesn't have
enough memory, true. Otherwise, not necessarily or rather,
it depends on the job. There certainly are a lot of things
bottlenecked by the HDD(s), but if you start timing how long
it takes some things to open, then look at the # of files,
total size additive plus the seek time of the HDD, there's
still quite a lot of time unaccounted for. The HDD is one
of the most common large bottlenecks but the CPU is also to
blame for some of it.

not any lack of performance in the
CPU. If the system is connected to a network, network delays may be
even worse, and CPU speed still won't matter.

Depends on the task, Windows GUI navigation maybe not, maybe
not even email, websurfing, basic office tasks. Problem is
that although these are the most common PC tasks and do
respond well to a HDD upgrade, there's still plenty
stressing the CPU for brief peaks even if total % of
utilization isn't that high.

Additionally, even if you have a blazingly fast CPU, you need very
fast memory to get full performance from it. Cache is not a
substitute for fast memory.

True, but quite a bit of memory goes a long way even if it's
slow memory as it's practically always a faster filecache
than the hard drive.

 

[kony]

He didn't get it. I'll summon a tattoo artist, stat. When he's done,
dimwit, proceed to the nearest mirror and read your sloped forehead of
yours till enlightenment penetrates that thick cranium of yours.

Wow Trent you're magical. I now feel enlightened and can
stop arguing about fans. LOL.

 

[kony]

You were done days ago, child.

Done like a dinner in fact.

I was done before I started, because I don't have fans dying
at 2-3 year intervals.

 

[tony sayer]

Only a very tiny minority of business users are running such exotica.
A lot of machines never run much more than Outlook, Excel, Word, and
Internet Explorer.

Very true;!.....

 

[kony]

The CPU fan failed. The AMD processor had no provision for overtemp
protection, and heated up until it burned its own socket and the
motherboard. That would not have happened if it had been an Intel
processor.

.... or if your motherboard had protection as the next
generation AMD platforms did. You cite something that is no
longer true (with more modern AMD platforms) as a reason to
now not buy AMD. That makes not sense at all. It's like
claiming that because Intel released a P3 1.13GHz (or
Pentium 66, whatever example you want...) that wasn't
stable, you then swear off all OTHER Intel processors too.

When one particular combination of parts is a problem, there
is one thing you can be sure of- those involved immediately
start taking steps to overcome the problem. You'd be right
not to buy an AMD system with the same platform that allowed
that old CPU to overheat, but not to avoid any other for
this non-applicable reason.

If it had been an Intel processor, I would have saved $1000 in
hardware replacement costs.

This sounds inflated. The then-aged and used CPU and board
were worth $1000? Didn't it occur to put a good heatsink on
parts this valuable? Neither AMD nor Intel's 'sinks have
ever been known as high-end, but certainly a board and CPU
valued at $1000 should be considered just that.

Intel's last-resort shutdown would have
made all the difference. I could have just bought a $5 fan and
continued on my way.

Maybe, or if you'd bought the intel system you might have
had some motherboard bug or who-knows-what-else instead.
These kinds of things are random failures, if they only
effected one brand (AMD vs Intel) the other would have been
out of business years ago. Sure it was overheat on one
now-defunct AMD platform, but tomorrow something else.
Again is it not a reason to avoid AMD now anymoreso than any
other manufacturer who has make something that failed (and
most have, nothing is perfect).

I lost two systems to AMD's lack of that feature. I'm not going to
lose any more, which is why I run Intel now. AMD had its chance and
blew it. It will be a long time before I trust them again. I don't
care how fast their processors are.

This is very odd, the odds that such would happen are
astronomical against it (having both fail like this). I now
suspect there is something more as yet undiscovered to
account for the failures... either that or you are an
extremely unlucky person.

See above. It was exactly the right and logical conclusion. AMD =
$1000 replacement cost. Intel = $5 replacement cost.

I don't think you can even say for sure that it was AMD's
fault rather than the fan manufacturer or motherboard
manufacturer, or the system assembler or ???

Even so, "maybe" you're right, that if you had chosen Intel
you'd have saved some $. On the other hand, maybe a board
malfunction caused it in the first place. We dont' know all
these details so if you insist it's a reason not to buy AMD,
ok then- but plenty of people have a different AMD
experience, enough to make what you describe look very
unusual. I honestly can't tell you how many AMD boxes I
have here at present but it's around a dozen at the moment
(ignoring those that have come and gone) and none have
failed as yours did.

I don't expect it to be trouble-free, but I don't want it to
self-destruct.


It _was_ the focal point. See above.

yes, you saw "result" rather than "cause". AMD didn't CAUSE
the failure.

Let me put it another way. To many people, losing the CPU
is trivial compared to having the system down till it's
diagnosed and repaired (fan replacement(?) in this case).
They would buy a premium heatsink for a premium AMD OR Intel
CPU, only settling for the budget grade retail sink from
either manufacturer to save a buck on a lower-end CPU. This
is a large part of why premium heatsinks exist at all, that
it isn't so hard to better what Intel/AMD offer.

That doesn't decrease your loss, but perhaps it will make
you think about what heatsink (and particularly fan) you use
on (any) CPU, including Intel's.

I don't know if the CPU was normally hot-running or not. I know that
it was a serious fire hazard. It could have set the room on fire
instead of just burning the motherboard.

Something was wrong outside of the CPU or fan failure then,
an overheating CPU will not pose a serious fire hazzard.

I did: I bought a processor that shuts down if it overheats.

Are you really that dense? Obviously the problem was that
it overheated. If you want Intel, fine, If you want it
because of your unfortunate loss, also fine. It doesn't
begin to change the PROBLEM, which was the CAUSE of the AMD
based system overheating.

Do you have sprinkler systems in your home? Perhaps you do,
but most people don't. If someone comes along and torches
the place, was it the builder's fault the place went up, or
the person who set it on fire? What was the CAUSE?

System failure prevention is more about addressing failure
causes than trying to minimize damage. Most systems (most
popular volume sales) are Celerons, worth under $100. The
maintenance fees to diagnose then fix a fan are easily the
basic bench fee plus the cost of the part (the fan). That
will tend to equal the value of the CPU after a couple years
if not less, and doesn't begin to account for the downtime
even to a home/PC user as they supposedly needed to use the
system else it wouldn't have been on in the first place.

Irrelevant.

Completely relevant.

The fan failed when I wasn't there to replace anything.
The processor nearly set the machine on fire, and ruined the PC.

Nonsense. It did not almost set the machine on fire. If
your machine almost caught on fire I would suspect the CPU,
the fan, and everythign else was merely a casualty of
whatever DID overheat, but it wasn't the CPU because a CPU
will not produce that kind of heat to ignite anything.

The
lack of overtemp protection in the processor was the direct cause of
this. I have now plugged this hole by buying a processor with
overtemp protection, from Intel.

The more I hear about your failure, the more I suspect that
whatever it was, you're just as vulnerable to it now. PCs
catching on fire sounds more like a board or PSU problem.

I owe no loyalty to AMD. Their processor cost me a fortune--as much
as a boxful of Intel processors--and I don't plan to make the same
mistake twice.

Ok, note that I was never trying to talk you into buying
one, rather discussing your reasons for avoiding parts that
do not have the potential problem you are citing as the
reason not to buy them. You are just mad at AMD and that is
why you won't buy, today. You are entitled to be mad at
whoever you want I suppose.

Most people already have more horsepower than they will ever need for
anything except games. They don't need benchmarks or faster
processors.

Nobody will ever need more than 64K either. Ironically
enough I often find those who are barely adept at PCs, put
the most continuous load on them. People running AOL, plus
a dozen spywares and viri, plus a graphical screensaver,
plus their IM, and Weatherbug, and a host of other junk
consuming about 320MB of memory when they only have 256MB
installed.

Normal users don't care.

In fact, if vendors were willing to sell their older models of
processors at dirt-chip prices, they could sell quite a few, since a
lot of people would cheerfully buy a really inexpensive PC, and it
would still be enough for anything they might have in mind.

They care, but it would depend on how much cost difference
there was. Remember that some normal users do buy a P4
instead of a Celeron, because they believe it's faster.
They might not be able to quantify the difference, maybe not
ever realize a beneft, but they do care. Same with Core Duo
now, lots of people want it, have cited it as a desirable
thing in online forums but when pressed about what they
actually use their systems for, it turns out they'd benefit
more from a faster single core CPU. Even when they're wrong
they care.

Typically people who don't care so much like you suggest,
aren't picking between the AMD or Intel CPU, they're people
that keep using their present system, will end up paying
$200 to fix it when it breaks instead of $350 or more to
replace it.

 

[chrisv]

Their P3 fans
should have been deemed defective because they all started
making high pitched bearing whine noise after a few months.

My daughter's P3-1GHz, with stock Intel heatsink/fan, is 5 years old
and has had no such problem.

 

[kony]

No, the odds of it being needed are 100% if the machine is run long
enough, because eventually all mechanical cooling systems (such as
fans) fail.

"IF" it's run long enough, every single part will have
failed, or rather, that first part that takes the whole
system down. That part does not have to be, and usually is
not the CPU fan if you used a good, well implemented fan.

Many years later, as with any mechanical device (containing
"thing") it is prudent to do maintanance. This goes for
PCs, cars, houses, anything... you replace parts when at the
end of their useful lifespan, when it is convenient or
scheduled, not as an emergency "accident" scenario. You
service the rest, clean out dust, etc and so forth, as
required.

Essentially while what you wrote might seem right on the
surface, in reality it is wrong. If you choose to properly
implement a good quality fan, the system will have been
retired before the fan had aged enough to fail, whether by
choice or another part failure. Only when using lesser
quality fans or bad design/implementation choices would you
find the CPU 'sink fan failed prematurely.

You have already demonstrated your inability to do that and
the resultant damage that you now blame on a 3rd party.
Sorry but you are the last person on earth I'd consider to
have knowledge about fans, except maybe on the one or two in
particular, to avoid using.

Perhaps you are like Rod, pretending to know something
without having ample evidence, only looking at a small
subset of all factors. There are plenty of devices out in
the wild built with good fans that don't break down in a few
years time. Perhaps you never even noticed them because
they keep on running fine... but use pretty much the same
fans you could have in your pc if you made better choices.

 

[Mxsmanic]

I used to think that too, but I've seen too many
grandmothers plopping pictures in their 2400x2400 scanners,
then firing up their auto-everything photoediting app that
chokes on processing a 200MB image.

They need more memory.