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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the ??? dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Hoping the Meltdown and Spectre security problems might mean Intel would be buying you a shiny new computer after a chip recall? Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Intel famously paid hundreds of millions of dollars to recall its Pentium processors after the 1994 discovery of the "FDIV bug" that revealed rare but real calculation errors. Meltdown and Spectre are proving similarly damaging to Intel's brand, sending the company's stock down more than 5 percent.

[...] But Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the new problems are much more easily fixed -- and indeed are already well on their way to being fixed, at least in the case of Intel-powered PCs and servers. Intel said Thursday that 90 percent of computers released in the last 5 years will have fixes available by the end of next week. "This is very very different from FDIV," Krzanich said, criticizing media coverage of Meltdown and Spectre as overblown. "This is not an issue that is not fixable... we're seeing now the first iterations of patches."

Source: Nope, no Intel chip recall after Spectre and Meltdown, CEO says


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:01AM (2 children)

    by Marand (1081) on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:01AM (#618951) Journal

    Intel's somewhat better compatibility with most things and lower temperatures make it the basically superior choice.

    I think you haven't been paying enough attention lately, the temperature thing's reversed with Intel and AMD's newest offerings. Intel's latest chips have been the ones running hot (look up Intel's TIM vs. solder issues, and the lengths people are going to to fix them), especially the ones they pushed out fast to combat Ryzen and Threadripper, while Ryzen chips (especially the non-X ones like the 1700 and 1600) are much cooler than AMD's failed *dozer era chips.

    Anecdotal example, but with air cooling and the stock cooler that came with it, My R7 1700 tends to run around 30C on normal load, and I haven't been able to get it to go over 60C, not even after hours of 100% cpu/thread utilisation. People are even OCing them up to nearly 4ghz on the stock cooler. Meanwhile, people with Intel chips are reporting abrupt jumps to 90C, reviews of newer chips indicate they need massive liquid cooling to OC reliably, and people are actually suggesting delidding the CPUs to fix the problems. Delidding a $1000+ CPU to fix thermal issues is insane.

    Currently, if you want a cooler chip, AMD's the way to go, not Intel.

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  • (Score: 1) by Crash on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)

    by Crash (1335) on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:19AM (#619042)

    Indeed, overclocking a $1000+ CPU is insane. So if you've already tossed the warranty out the window, what's a little more insanity added to the fray.

    • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:47AM

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:47AM (#619070) Journal

      Overclocking is considered a feature of some chips, and Intel sells the OC-enabled ones at a premium specifically because of that. Expecting to be able to use a feature you paid for isn't "insane", though having to delid the CPU to do so well is.

      (For anyone curious, on the AMD side all the Ryzen CPUs are OCable, no premium attached, but you have to buy an appropriate motherboard. Mid-range and high-end boards support it but low-end ones have OC disabled.)