AMD Blocks Unlock; Gigabyte Fights Back

[albertj]

Granted, AMD may sell some x4-qualified chips as x3 or x4 parts. But do we have any reason to believe that this happens often? AMD has some reason to NOT do this. They already have processors that fill those (or similar) product niches. The Athlon II, for example, or older production chips still in retail channels. It's been mentioned here and elsewhere that the Phenom II is an expensive chip to produce. I don't have the numbers conveniently on hand, but isn't the die size/performance worse compared to i7? AMD is running lower margins. Given that, wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep the parts selling for as high as price as possible (again, given thar retail channels haven't exhausted supplies of Phenom I and older Athlon64 x2 parts)?

AMD probably does have some perfectly legitimate reasons to block people from enabling those cores, though. What if they do in fact get a reputation for unlockable cores that fail later on, or can't be unlocked at all? People will buy those x2 parts, hoping to turn them into an x4. Even people on this board (probably about as tech-savvy an audience as one can find) are saying, "Oh, they're just x4s that AMD is locking because they don't make enough faulty chips." If THIS BOARD is pish-poshing and thinking they can get an x4 part for the cost of an x2, what are other people going to think?

I suppose it's logical to say that AMD shouldn't care, because everybody knows that they're taking a risk, and they're not guaranteed anything... but is that really true? Somebody on this very board is going to be disappointed, because somebody's going to buy that x2 thinking it's a perfectly good x4 that AMD sold as an x2. No matter how much somebody can say, "Oh, I won't be disappointed. I know the risks" can we ever really say that? It's watching my friends' kids beg to play games with the older kids and say, "I won't cry if I lose. I just want to play." Then they lose, and... Well, you do the math. I hate to say it, but sometimes it's better to not let the little kids play. It upsets them too much to lose.

If I were running a business, I'd want people to be happy with what they buy, and for them to buy what they intend to buy. I don't want people gambling on what they might or might not get. The last thing I'd want is somebody building their new machine, getting the x2 hoping for an x4, and for the next 2 years always thinking, "Well, it's okay. I mean... I guess I got what I paid for... but... well... I was hoping I was going to get a *good* chip."

 

[ckj]

It seems like none of you actually know how the semiconductor manufacturing process. It's really hard for them to make a quad core cpu with all cores working!(which is the reason intel makes dual cores and puts two of them in one package for a quad core). The more cores the larger the die size, the larger the die size, the higher the chance of it containing a random defect. AMD has 2x-5x the units with only 2/3 cores working compared to cpu's with all four cores working, which is understood in their business plan to sell the dual and tri core parts. I'll guarantee that they don't have a bunch of working quad core parts that they are shipping as 2 core or 3 core parts.

I think it's great when a bunch of enthusiasts discuss these topics, but it's clear that most of you don't understand the actual manufacturing and yield challenges that semiconductor manufacturers have.

The parts that are dual or tri cores DO contain some type of a problem in the de-activated cores. It may only appear in some situations, but you have no idea what or when that situation is.

 

[ckj]

[citation][nom]attacking panda cats[/nom]In a batch of cpus if one is defective they all get discarded or bumped down to a lower chip. . . . I think.[/citation]

That is incorrect. A batch of CPU's consist of 25 wafers. Each wafer contains anywhere from 50 to 500 CPU's, depending on the product version (size of cpu). Of all of the CPU's on said wafer, a percentage of them will fail. Let's take a typical example and say that 10% are GOOD quad cores, 20% are GOOD Tri-cores, and 40% are GOOD dual-cores. You would then have 30% of the die that fail for various things. You might have 15% that fail for logic or scan tests, each die failing in a different way as the defect just happened to randomly occur in the logic area. You might have another 10% that contain a non-repairable defect in the L1/L2 cache SRAM arrays, of course with each defect being at a different bitcell location. That would leave 5% of the remaining failures that may happen to have a defect in "other" circuitry.

Every wafer has defects on it, only a percentage of chips are good. There are teams of people that work all day long on solving these problems to try and get more good chips on each wafer (like myself).

 

[afrobacon]

If your unlocking a core to begin with, chances are you know the risks involved.

In reality I think this helps AMD. Sure they'll sell less of their higher end models, but the publicity will only help their sales for the budget chips. I actually put an PIIX2-550 in my htpc, knowing I can always unlock a core or two for some free performance down the road.
(tested all 4 cores @3.2ghz for ~24hrs with superpi)

 

[rockabye]

[citation][nom]ieatfishburritos[/nom]Second reason is that people will unlock the cores, and later sell or give the computers to others whom may not have knowledge that a defective core is in use. Hopefully a hospital doesn't buy the computer and use it to run your life support system?[/citation]
I would hope that a hospital wouldn't buy mission critical hardware from Crazy Bob's garage sale. If you come to visit grandma and her life support system has flaming skull stickers and cathode lights, maybe you should consider having her moved to another hospital.
On a more serious note, I doubt those sorts of systems use desktop CPUs anyway.
I think it was a good move for AMD. They made it harder to unlock the cores so the average Joe wouldn't do it on a whim and potentially ruin something, yet still leaving it possible to unlock for those enthusiasts who are determined and know the risks.

 

[stairmand]

To all those people who say the other cores are faulty.

I remember when ATi bought out the X800XT (I think) it was really an X850 but had some of the pipelines disabled so they could have a card at a lower price point. If you flashed the X800XT with the X850 BIOS it was exactly the was card.

Personally I would be surprised if most of the Dual/Tripple cores were not perfectly good quad cores otherwise to fill demand AMD must have serious yeild problems.

 

[Guest]

People seem to think that yields are horrible: They are not.

When a chip first goes into production, yields can be low to very low, but by the time production is ramped up, it is quite high, and by the end of production it is close to 100% defect free. If production was so full of defects, and so unreliable, then computers themselves would fail alot more often than they do, since there would surely be weak parts of the processor resulting from the inconsistencies.

 

[thartist]

AMD should shut up and ride the wave, it has been a catalyst for their sales.
And in the end only a few do the hack, they know they are taking a risk, and only some are successful and if failing they may buy a new one again and NOT do sh't with it, so what's to worry for AMD?

 

[Guest]

We don't really know if bugs on a disabled core can be responsible for virusses or bluescreens...
If so it would be better to just leave the core disabled.
But if gaming performance would increase with smaller issues (eg: now and then a glitch in the graphics), enabling cores could be very interesting!
However,with current prices, I'm not going to risk buying a 2core to enable the other 2 cores, if for less than $50 or $80 more I can buy a 4core!

In fact a dual core phenom 2 paired with a Radeon 49xx card, still is going to give me plenty of fps on most games on my LCD screen.
And if not, I could reduce the resolution to 1280x800 or so, where I'll still have plenty of resolution,quality and gaming performance.

I mean, it's no longer 640x480 where every pixel counts. Most games can be run quite comfortably on 800p screens!

 

[Shadow703793]

Also note some good CPUs are actually have disabled core because AMD want's to meed the demand for (dual) core CPUs.

 

[Guest]

Say you have 5% failure rate. Each chip has four cores on it. So your chance of getting 4 passes in a row is (.95)^4 = 0.81 or 81%. What AMD has done is increase yield by saying only three cores need to pass. Your rate, in the same situation of getting AT LEAST three cores to pass is: (.95)^4 + (.95)^3*(.05)*4 = 0.99. The yield improves a lot if you're allowed to have one failure. Still, the chance is pretty good that the one core they disabled is actually a good, working core.

Note: If AMD is binning out the four-pass cores as a separate part number, the incidence of the disabled cores actually being bad would be higher.

 

[Intershield]

Over the past 13 years I have owned 2 ATI Grafx cards and 3 PCs with AMD CPUs. "None" of them lasted me over 2 years lifespan total use. These chips and hardware are cheap for a reason.

 

[tipoo]

I've got to side with AMD on this one. The X3 CPU's are essentially X4 with one defective core disabled, they salvage what they can so they dont have to waste the whole thing. They might not even be turning a profit on the X3's.

 

[tipoo]

[citation][nom]intershield[/nom]Over the past 13 years I have owned 2 ATI Grafx cards and 3 PCs with AMD CPUs. "None" of them lasted me over 2 years lifespan total use. These chips and hardware are cheap for a reason.[/citation]


Then your probably doing something wrong.

 

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]ieatfishburritos[/nom]I think you guys are missing the big picture on this one. There is a real reason the core is locked, it doesn't work correctly. It comes down to some people who will unlock the core, have bad experiences and blast AMD chips.[/citation]
Tell the same things to a person that sees a speed limit sign of 65 mph and does 90. Or someone that comes from the bank and discovers the bank cashed one decimal place to the right for them and they walk. People know the consequences if they know how to unlock the extra cores in the first place - bottom line is that they do it anyway.

 

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]intershield[/nom]Over the past 13 years I have owned 2 ATI Grafx cards and 3 PCs with AMD CPUs. "None" of them lasted me over 2 years lifespan total use. These chips and hardware are cheap for a reason.[/citation]
Both the CPU AND the GPU went? Seriously, I have never had a GPU nor a CPU go bad on me on and OEM or custom build (although the now infamous Nvidia chipsets for laptops is a different story). Check into what you are doing wrong here. Are you referring to the actual chips or the computer when you say

"None" of them lasted me over 2 years lifespan total use.

?

 

[ckj]

[citation][nom]Matt_B[/nom]Both the CPU AND the GPU went? Seriously, I have never had a GPU nor a CPU go bad on me on and OEM or custom build (although the now infamous Nvidia chipsets for laptops is a different story). Check into what you are doing wrong here. Are you referring to the actual chips or the computer when you say ?[/citation]


Bottom line, if they meant for you to have the option to unlock the the other core they would have sold it with that as an advertising key point. It's not the point, it's an error that it happened, and the possibility will be removed by AMD in the near future. Deal with it, nothing is for free, especially faulty chips.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Gigabyte ftw!
At least in Denmark both MSI and Asus have cheaper priced boards, but there's definetly value in buying the more expensive Gigabyte boards anyway.

 

[A Stoner]

scenario:
AMD produces 500,000 chips, 25,000 are scrapped for errors that make them unusable, 75,000 are good for 2 cores, 100,000 are good for 3 cores and 300,000 are good for all 4 cores. The market demand for chips is 300,000 2 core chips, 150,000 3 core and 25,000 4 core chips. The problem here is that AMD has too many fully functioning chips, and it has to find a solution. If it lowers the price of 4 core chips to get more demand for those chips, it loses the margin that they need to stay in business, and those lower prices on 4 core chips will require that 3 and 2 core chips also be lower priced and AMD loses alot of money and Intel becoms a de facto monopoly. If it disables working cores to meet the demand for 3 and 2 core chips, it loses the margin that it would never have gotten by not selling it as a higher priced 4 core chip, but it meets all the demands for it's chips if it does so, thus keeping market share, and getting every last penny they can from the batch of processors manufactured, and this is the solution AMD has taken. Lower prices for things creates a higher demand for those items. A 2 core chip that can be turned into a 4 core chip can convince someone who would have paid for the 4 core chip to decide to roll the dice and try a 2 core chip turned into a 4 core chip, thus AMD loses the margin they need from 4 core chip sales. Instead of getting the above demand numbers, the new demand numbers become closer to 305,000 2 core chips, 160,000 3 core and 10,000 4 core chips netting 15,000 fewer big ticket sales and more of the less lucrative low ticket sales for a chip that actually would have passed a 4 core test. Thus, they find a way to stop the bleed and return demand to the more lucrative numbers.

 

[A Stoner]

scenario:
AMD produces 500,000 chips, 25,000 are scrapped for errors that make them unusable, 75,000 are good for 2 cores, 100,000 are good for 3 cores and 300,000 are good for all 4 cores. The market demand for chips is 300,000 2 core chips, 150,000 3 core and 25,000 4 core chips. The problem here is that AMD has too many fully functioning chips, and it has to find a solution. If it lowers the price of 4 core chips to get more demand for those chips, it loses the margin that they need to stay in business, and those lower prices on 4 core chips will require that 3 and 2 core chips also be lower priced and AMD loses alot of money and Intel becoms a de facto monopoly. If it disables working cores to meet the demand for 3 and 2 core chips, it loses the margin that it would never have gotten by not selling it as a higher priced 4 core chip, but it meets all the demands for it's chips if it does so, thus keeping market share, and getting every last penny they can from the batch of processors manufactured, and this is the solution AMD has taken. Lower prices for things creates a higher demand for those items. A 2 core chip that can be turned into a 4 core chip can convince someone who would have paid for the 4 core chip to decide to roll the dice and try a 2 core chip turned into a 4 core chip, thus AMD loses the margin they need from 4 core chip sales. Instead of getting the above demand numbers, the new demand numbers become closer to 305,000 2 core chips, 160,000 3 core and 10,000 4 core chips netting 15,000 fewer big ticket sales and more of the less lucrative low ticket sales for a chip that actually would have passed a 4 core test. Thus, they find a way to stop the bleed and return demand to the more lucrative numbers.