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ronch
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AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 1:33 am

About a year ago I sent back a couple of AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs back to AMD due to overheating. The first thing people would think is that the heatsink/fan or case ventilation is the culprit. Upon closer scrutiny, however, one realizes that the processors themselves are overheating. Whatever the reason remains unclear.

The thing is, with the systems in which those two processors I sent back were installed, I tried other processor units and they didn't overheat and the problem disappeared. Only the processors themselves were replaced. When the replacements arrived, only one of the replacement units were used because I ran out and bought a Sempron for one of the PCs without a processor (it's an office PC and work must continue). Now, a year later, another PC with an Athlon 64 X2 is overheating. I replaced its CPU with the replacement from AMD and voila! Problem fixed. Note that before replacing the overheating processor I tried to fix it by cleaning the fan/heatsink and replacing the thermal compound, which didn't fix the problem.

Have there been other similar cases to this? The processor just seems to generate more heat as it gets old (not sure if it's gradual or it just shoots up right away), and in my case, manifested the problem in 7 months, 15 months and 22 months (three processors have met this fate). I don't know if this is a problem with AMD's 65nm tech or some other factor. AMD's no longer selling 65nm chips now but if the problem is not with their 65nm tech, it might carry over to their 45nm chips and soon, 32nm chips.
NEC V20 > AMD Am386DX-40 > AMD Am486DX2-66 > Intel Pentium-200 > Cyrix 6x86MX-PR233 > AMD K6-2/450 > AMD Athlon 800 > Intel Pentium 4 2.8C > AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800 > AMD Phenom II X3 720 > AMD FX-8350 > RYZEN?
 
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 10:12 am

Well, it is admittedly a very small sample size, but the two 65nm AMD systems I've owned have been run very hard (F@h 24x7 for several years), and I have not had any problems. All of my 45nm systems are still going strong too (and are also being pushed similarly hard); but those are newer systems...
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mikeymike
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 11:41 am

I've built sixteen A64 X2 systems for customers and AFAIK they're all going strong. I don't often check CPU temps but the ones I've checked seem to be within acceptable limits (45 - 50C), of course it depends on the time of year as well.

I've only ever seen one CPU failure, and that was an AMD K6-2.
 
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 1:45 pm

mikeymike wrote:
I've only ever seen one CPU failure, and that was an AMD K6-2.

In nearly 15 years of building AMD systems, from the original K6 all the way up to the Phenom II (probably 2-3 dozen systems total), I don't think I've *ever* seen a CPU failure. Plenty of flaky motherboards and RAM, but never a bad CPU. Not even the Socket A Duron I damaged trying to install the HSF -- chipped a corner off of the exposed die, was certain I'd killed it, but it still worked just fine. Or the overclocking / passive cooling experiments I did back in the late K6-III and early Athlon days, where I intentionally pushed things to the point of instability -- the system always stabilized again after I let things cool down.
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 1:47 pm

Hmm, if the daughter can excavate a tunnel to the old Athlon XP box I'll give her a whirl.
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 3:17 pm

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mikeymike
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sun May 01, 2011 4:24 pm

just brew it! wrote:
mikeymike wrote:
I've only ever seen one CPU failure, and that was an AMD K6-2.

In nearly 15 years of building AMD systems, from the original K6 all the way up to the Phenom II (probably 2-3 dozen systems total), I don't think I've *ever* seen a CPU failure. Plenty of flaky motherboards and RAM, but never a bad CPU. Not even the Socket A Duron I damaged trying to install the HSF -- chipped a corner off of the exposed die, was certain I'd killed it, but it still worked just fine. Or the overclocking / passive cooling experiments I did back in the late K6-III and early Athlon days, where I intentionally pushed things to the point of instability -- the system always stabilized again after I let things cool down.


I don't really know what happened with the K6-2, this was back in my first job. Someone else's computer wouldn't boot (a company full of techies and I was quite junior), it gave out a particular beep sequence, I had a spare, tried it, it worked. I can't remember how much troubleshooting was involved, I don't think I did any of it.
 
mAJORD
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sat May 07, 2011 10:27 am

Yes, there is a problem with some / A certain batch(es) of 65nm G1 Athlon X2's. I've had Two 4000+ suffer this problem over the years.

The Symptoms are sporatic temperature readings from the internal sensor, that occasionally head into the 'danger zone' and cause the PC to Shut down via the BIOS shutdown setting , Typically at 90c. It's not actually producing more heat, just the sensor goes crazy for some reason.
 
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Sat May 07, 2011 10:35 am

mAJORD wrote:
Yes, there is a problem with some / A certain batch(es) of 65nm G1 Athlon X2's. I've had Two 4000+ suffer this problem over the years.

The Symptoms are sporatic temperature readings from the internal sensor, that occasionally head into the 'danger zone' and cause the PC to Shut down via the BIOS shutdown setting , Typically at 90c. It's not actually producing more heat, just the sensor goes crazy for some reason.

If it really is just the sensor spazzing out, then the solution is to disable thermal shutdown in your BIOS. This will mean that there's a risk of frying the CPU if the fan ever fails... but on an older non-critical CPU/system maybe that's not the end of the world? (And if you use a quality HSF the fan will probably outlast the usefulness of the system anyhow...)
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derFunkenstein
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Wed May 25, 2011 8:28 am

I've seen two AMD CPU failures, and that was at the 130nm process. The first was an Athlon XP that a client brought into the shop because it wouldn't POST. He'd built it himself and attached the heatsink without any thermal grease. It just popped.

Then several months later, I've told the story about a socket tab on a Biostar board that broke off while the system was running. Much more than the CPU failed in that instance.

Neither of these are manufacturing defects, though. Well, not manufacturing defects on AMD's part (more like Biostar).
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Wed May 25, 2011 8:46 am

Well... I'd say the first one is more a combination of AMD design shortcoming (lack of on-die thermal throttling) and user error (improper heatsink installation).
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derFunkenstein
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Wed May 25, 2011 9:48 am

I have to admit, when Toms Hardware did the videos of the exploding Athlon vs. a throttling Pentium 4, I didn't think it was a big deal. The first case I wrote about above happened about 4 months after those videos hit the web, and then I started to understand the importance.
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Convert
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Wed May 25, 2011 12:42 pm

Nope, never seen any issues with X2 CPUs and we have a lot of them out there.

This got me thinking though about what I've seen. Out of all the PCs and servers we've built or sold I've noticed (tens of thousands range):

More socket 478 heatsink latches break than socket 462. About a 6 to 1 ratio, aka only 1 socket 462 mechanism broke. To intel's credit their cpu's have always been wonderful about throttling so they don't kill themselves. That and intel systems sold to AMD are prob 6 to 1 anyways so keep this in mind with the following experiences, also keep in mind even with that ratio it's still a huge amount of AMD systems.

Only one intel CPU that died on its own and it was a core 2. I've seen plenty of them die but it was due to PSU failure that took everything else out. No dead AMD CPUs yet.

That AMD's CPU retention mechanism sucks. The CPU comes out with the heatsink 100% of the time. Yet somehow we've killed 0% of them which I can assure you is luck.

More permanently damaged 775 sockets than CPU pins.

More dead components due to bad caps than I could ever imagine. A surprising amount of which were found on Intel server and desktop boards. Heck I just recapped a couple DQ35JOE boards.

An astonishing amount of worthless third party motherboards. It's seems like a total crapshoot even with Gigabyte and Asus.

Most GPU fans fail within a short period of time.

Seagate has really gone downhill in every regard.

Hardware requirements for software is completely broken in every way. Medical applications are the worst.

Astonishing failure rates that don’t get any press. Seagate drives anyone? How about WD Green? Nvidia GPU’s? Logitech mice and Microsoft keyboards? Wireless mice and keyboards that are basically unusable regardless of receiver distance? I loved the reaction I got from Best Buy staff when I said I had 14 Microsoft Wireless Media Desktop 1000 combo’s to return a couple months ago. I can only assume that due to the diversity of options out there we don’t see something similar to what happened with the GXPs but I don’t see anything different about the failure rates with some of these examples. If we have a system come in with bad caps on an Intel motherboard for example we already know ahead of time that over the next couple of weeks, north of 75% of all the systems we sold with that board in it are going to be in the shop for the same issue.
Last edited by Convert on Wed May 25, 2011 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: AMD's 65nm Process... Problematic?

Wed May 25, 2011 1:11 pm

Convert wrote:
That AMD's CPU retention mechanism sucks. The CPU comes out with the heatsink 100% of the time. Yet somehow we've killed 0% of them which I can assure you is luck.

I've had this issue as well. It mostly stopped happening when I switched to a less sticky thermal paste (I believe Arctic Ceramique was especially problematic). But yeah, they really need to provide a way to pry the heatsink off of the CPU without potentially yanking the CPU out of the socket.

Most GPU fans fail within a short period of time.

Yup, that's why I prefer passive if at all possible, and integrated if the system won't be used for gaming.

Wireless mice and keyboards that are basically unusable regardless of receiver distance?

I've discovered that the key to fixing this issue is to put the receiver on a USB extension cord, so that it can be physically located at least a few inches from any large metal objects (especially the computer itself). Yes, this partially defeats the purpose of being cordless... but you can usually find someplace inobtrusive to stick it with double-sided foam tape. For example, at work my mouse receiver is stuck to the underside of my desktop, near my keyboard tray; works great.
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