AMD refutes conflagration allegation

AN INTERNAL PRESENTATION, which gives every sign of coming from AMD, has upped the ante on a furious discussion over whether machines using its processors go phut if they become suddenly uncool.

That follows a flurry of activity on hardware and overclocking sites everywhere yesterday as a debate flowed to and fro on the burning issue of the day.

A report on the Pabster claimed to show some weeks back that if a heatsink became detached from an AMD CPU, a Pie Lane scenario could follow.

According to the Powerpoint presentation, AMD has shipped more than 35 million Athlon and Duron chips without any report of a "properly" installed heatsink and fan combo "falling off" during normal operation.

Further, claims AMD, the thermal diode in the "Palomino" and "Morgan" cores reports the CPU temperature to logic on a motherboard. If there is danger of overheating, this diode ensures that the rest of the circuitry knows about it and the mobo shuts down so fires can't occur.

Even with Palominos and Morgans, the proper circuitry ensures no danger of a conflagration, claims AMD.

AMD said: "Removing the radiator from a car while it is traveling down the highway" is analogous to operating a CPU with a properly installed heatsink and fan.

The firm also refutes allegations that a Pentium 4 without a cooler stays operating. It says it will shut down with seconds of reaching around 120 degrees on the Celsius scale.

Videos circulating on the Web, and which we pointed to yesterday, are claimed to be AMD productions and there's also one - which came with the Powerpoint presentation we saw - which shows what happens to Pentium 4s without fans.

You can find what the Pabster has to say here, some of which significantly differs from AMD's presentation. µ