From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2002 - 13:52:11 MST
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Dave Sill wrote:
> That's outrageous! They're probably susceptible to out-of-spec
> voltages/currents and can be damaged with even a light hammer
> blow. Damn those penny pinching bastards.
Actually, in most AMD CPUs you have the naked die underside looking at
you. A number of people had to find out how brittle silicon is the hard
way (chipped edges at best, dead die at worst).
> Seriously, though, Intel chips don't have built-in fuses, they rely on
> the mainboard or power supply to not fry them. Does this cost Intel
No idea. I'm told recent AMDs have built-in thermal protection, but no
motherboard so far (?) supports that. Given that their power density is
currently higher than Intel, this means instant thermal death if your heat
sink grows a gap, or a slow death if your fan fails or the fan connector
gets unplugged.
> credibility? This is pretty obvious FUD from Intel.
Nope, that's empirical observation from the trenches. Thermal design for
AMDs is far more critical than Intel. For time being, I'm rather fond of
AMDs, and this won't deter me from building my viz/number crunch box on
AMD. Meanwhile, my current box is a 700 MHz Intel Celeron (Coppermine)
stepping 06 (hey, I got it virtually for free), and my server/network
appliance will be based on an 1.3 GHz Tualatin Celery. Part of my choice
was a form factor, part of it was uncritical thermal and acoustical
design.
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