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Source of “AMDBurn” Video Speaks

By Van Smith

Date: October 29, 2001

This last weekend, a controversial video apparently from AMD appeared on the Internet directly contradicting infamous results produced from my former employer, Tom’s Hardware. Questions of the video’s authenticity have been hotly debated. The man claiming responsibility for releasing the video to the Internet sent us a note declaring the video’s legitimacy.

Terry Wang claims the video is indeed from AMD. You can obtain the original video here, and the new part 2 video here. Part 2 shows similar tests conducted on an Intel Pentium 4. In this video, the P4 turns off a short time after the heat sink is removed. This is logical since even in fully throttled mode, the P4 produces more heat than can be dissipated without a heat sink causing the die temperature to continuously rise until the thermal failsafe is tripped.

Here is Mr. Wang’s note:

To whom it may concern (meant to be post in forums),

Regarding about the video showing AMD's CPU did not burned up in a simulated HSF-failure tests. I'm responsible for getting that video, from a reliable source, and posted on the net. First with HardOCP's forum and then Anandtech's Forum...

It is simple as this... both CPU and motherboard (AMD platforms) reference design has internal thermal diode. Chipsets/BIOS on the motherboard has to correctly detect what kind of CPUs it is (let it be Duron, Thunderbird, MP, XP... etc.), so it can correctly calibrate and use the full functions of thermal diode.

Tom's tests most likely did not had the right motherboard to support the CPUs and therefore, CPU burned up as in his tests. Which I'm not surprised... (and no... I'm not working for AMD and I'm not a spokesperson for anyone on this issue)

People been questioning the authenticity of the video, honestly... I can't tell you much more than this... I did get this video from a reliable source and it is *made* by AMD. If Mr.Tom Pabst wasn't so famous, I probably can say something about his video (not that it isn't authentic) too... such as asking "Is he bought out by Intel? Just to to discredit AMD's technology?!"

I'm not here to prove Tom is wrong, just he could've be more thoroughly on his tests. Knowing the fact that Intel's R&D department is much much more bigger and better than AMD's, plus Intel's standardization among computer hardware is incredible. Also noting that he uses a motherboard, which it claims, to support the thermal diode of the Palominos (Chipsets not developed by AMD and board isn't made of AMD's reference design).

Again, you people have my word that the video did came from AMD... and you can believe whatever you want to believe. This is costing too much confusion and it certainly isn't necessary. A simple fact that I've point out and I hope you guys can get it as it is... Like HardOCP said... "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!" Have a nice day!

(Only reason I removed the main download link is because Apache, most likely, had a bug that crashed my OpenBSD server. For it not to happen again, I removed the link. =)

Terry "quad3d" Wang
http://www.fastclocking.com

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