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Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems 111

Posted by timothy from the glad-I-haven't-ordered-one-yet dept.
krautt writes: "AMD's desperate plight for technical superiority looks like it has caught up with them according to this article from CNET. I guess that's what happens when you ignore your Q&R engineers and release improperly tested hardware to market." According to the article, the "chip itself is not the likely cause. Instead, the flaw probably results from the overall design of the system or other components." Sounds more like a kink like a showstopper, but a disappointment for anyone in line for a Thunderbird.
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Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems More

Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems

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  • The commentary by timothy reads like an astroturf advertisment for Intel. It's bad enough when luser posters don't bother reading an article and go off half-cocked. It's inexcusable when the editors do it.

    Wait a minute. It was "krautt"'s submission that sounded like Intel propaganda, not timothy's comments. Here correctly pointed out that the article states that the CPU itself is probably not a fault.

  • A tiny flaw should hardly hurt AMD

    Right, but the general public still looks at a Pentium as the best chip, and an Athlon as an upstart. So a tiny flaw in a Pentium becomes understandable, whereas a tiny flaw in the Athlon chip becomes a press nightmare. In order for AMD to best Intel, they must have a much faster chip than anything out there, and it has to be flawless. Otherwise the Pentium still is looked at by the public as the best chip.

    Note.. this is not a slam on AMD - I own an Athlon 700 that I am more than happy with.
  • It makes the problem look like AMD's fault, aside from a very few quotes from the Gateway reps.

    Now you've moved off Slashdot completely. I suppose C|Net's editiorial content is Slashdot's fault, too, right?

    FWIW, I really don't see the C|Net article as biased, either. You might get that impression if you didn't read the whole article, but then, you said you did do that. The only distinguishing factor known at this point is that all the systems use AMD's Thunderbird chipset. That's reasonable information to put near the top of the story. And C|Net does state, early on, that "the chip itself is not the likely cause". Perhaps their one-line teaser under the headline should have stated this explicitly, but I wouldn't rake them over the coals for what, in the end, is the reader's fault for making assumptions.

    Anyone simply browsing for news would come away with impression that AMD's 1Ghz processors sucks.

    You cannot blame the journalists for the fact that people who aren't looking for the whole story don't get the whole story.

    Since you're so smart, how would you phrase the headline? Remember, the new chip is the distinguishing characteristic, so you have to include that fact. And I'm not going to read anything but the headline, as that would apparently be too much to ask.
  • [T]he slashdot headline implies that amd is guilty of faulty quality assurance testing, thus saying that the problem is with the cpu.

    I see no such statement in the Slashdot headline.

    True, the reader's comment out-right says AMD is guilty of that problem, but again: Everyone's entitled to their opinions.

  • Doh! (Score:3)

    by rodgerd ( 402 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @06:04PM (#959661) Homepage

    The words "pot, kettle,black" are ringing in my ears. My bad - sorry timothy.

  • his is rather double-standardish:

    If it is a problem with the chip, then let the company fix it, and let them be...

    Does no one recall the floating-point bug in Intel chips a couple of years ago? This is hardly different.

    And recall the hell Intel caught over it. And still does. So why let AMD be?

    Unless of course you're biased...

  • Umm... you miss the point, bud. The reason I said Zip + CD-R + DVD was that they're all IDE devices. Add a hard disk, and you get 4 IDE devices -- 2 masters, 2 slaves. Dell wouldn't sell that config for a while (not sure if they do now), because having the Zip, which is PIO mode 4 I believe, would drop the ATA/33-compliant CD-RW or DVD to PIO-4 speeds, which Dell (rightfully so) thought was unacceptable. I'm not saying that this can't be made to work, but Dell would not ship out systems like that.

    It's sort of moot though... who really needs a Zip when they have a CD-RW?
  • Jeez, Give them a break. They link to the site so you can read the story, the headline may cause a knee jerk reaction to 'protect' AMD. but if you really read the headline it does not say it's AMDs fault, it says there is a problem with Gateways 1Gz athlon system.
    A system is more then just the processor.
    That said, Slashdot editors needs to be aware of how there readers respond to this kind of statment.
    There has been alot of talk about how slashdot has gone down hill. I agree with this to some degree, but the readers seem to be going down hill as well. The readers have been just looking for reasons to spout off latly. There could be several reasons for this, but the number 1 reason,IMO, is that the readers feel betrayed by the whole Andover IPO affair. Slashdot used to be like a small elite club, but now anybody can join.
  • Just let moderation do its work.
  • The article specifically identifies the problem as being in Gateway 2000's error, yet you, krautt, say that AMD has not gone with their Quality Control department and released "untested hardware" into the market. Well, if you must know, the chip is very tested and runs on virtually every other motherboard properly. Try telling the news instead of spreading FUD... it helps.
  • I meant, logic... not login
  • Thank you!
    Ist been forever since ive seen a The Princess Bride reference here. Too bad some didnt get it.
  • What a shame. It would seem that with our regular compliment of trolls and spammers out and about, doing their rounds, that there's little room for insightful comment left on this forum. That's one of the reasons I decided it was incumbent upon me to do something about it (see comment #95.)

    Maybe i'll have to do something about this syringe idiot now. Beer and syringes... now who would have thought that they would mix? Perhaps he can give himself a hypodermic in some amusing part of his anatomy and save me the trouble of putting him into a very little box (which i would then feed to a very large canine)

    Oh yeah. Happy Birthday, Ms Hot Young Actress (albeit a belated one.)

  • Actually Intel have stopped (or will stop soon) including PSNs.
  • I agree. I started reading slashdot a little over a year ago and I thought it was the greatest site on the internet. But since then, my liking for "it" has really gone downhill; I think it might be because of the andover.net thing. who knows.


    Josh
  • What do you expect from a chip named after the cheapest of the cheapest "wines?" I'm half expecting Intel's new super secret "Colt 45." I can see the Lando marketing campaign now.
  • I recently bought an ASUS K7V and a 700 MHz Slot-A T-Bird, and am having similar problems to those described in the article. Whenever my system is loaded with a CPU & Memory/Disk intensive process, the power to my machine cuts out. No OS errors, no lockup, just power cutting out. Once in a while everything just freezes.

    I think that my 250W power supply just can't cut it when the IDE channel and CPU are heavily loaded. I thought that maybe it was my memory crapping out, but when I replaced my T-Bird with an Athlon 500 Classic, no problems at all, so I believe that my power supply is the culprit.

    I read that the T-Bird can suck up to 80 Watts alone, but I'm not sure how reliable that figure is. Now I'm probably going to get a nice 350W power supply and see if that fixes the problem. If not, back goes the Slot A T-Bird. Anyone know where to get a good power supply?

    Thanx.

  • Leaving aside my misreading of the article summary, I suspect any policy on editing submitters' text would generate as much heat as leaving it untouched, maybe more.

  • The bug, which was discovered last week during internal testing, prompts computers containing the chip to "lock up," said a Gateway spokesman.

    I wonder if they're testing these with Windows installed...

    MC

  • Gateway finds glitch in 1-GHz AMD systems

    This sounds more like Gateway bought systems from AMD (yeah, I know and you know, but still...) and discovered the bug for AMD. I thought that the slashdot headline was a little more fair. Besides, I almost always read the blurb that goes with the slashdot headline anyway, and timothy did justice to the story by pointing out that it was a Gateway problem.

  • Big Manufacturer + Bug == Not Surprising (Score:4)

    by Phaid ( 938 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @09:39PM (#959677) Homepage
    I'd lay odds it's a power supply issue. Why? Pure heuristics. PC makers like to save money where it doesn't really make sense, like in the power supply. Most Gateway, Dell, Micron, etc., PCs come with a measly 200 watt power supply - and a no name one at that, which may or may not be up to spec. Add to that the presence of a new chip, for which motherboard designs may not have stabilized yet, and you've got a system with stability issues. Someone mentioned the problematic FIC SD11 design that had PS issues back when the Athlon first came out -- I'm writing this on my cobbled together Athlon 550 / SD11 with a 300W power supply, and I've seen all this before.

    My first and only "major manufacturer" PC, top of the line in the summer of 1998, shipped with a PII/400, VoodooII, Riva 128 AGP, DVD-ROM + decoder card, PCI NIC, modem, ZIP drive, and 2 hard disks. Even with all that hardware, I was shocked to discover it only came equipped with a 200 watt power supply, which caused all kinds of lockups and crashes and on occasion prevented the system from even booting. The manufacturer refused to replace it, even though Intel's own website confirmed that, for the motherboard design, the PS was not adequate. They claimed that their "engineers" who "designed" these systems knew what they were doing and wouldn't have spec'd inadequate components. If that's the case, why did a $80 300W PS cure all of the system's problems?

    Basically, if you read through the marketspeak in the article, Gateway screwed up by putting something really cheap in these machines and now they're having lockup problems. "Designing" PC's from off the shelf parts is not rocket science, the only place where these people "push the envelope" is in seeing how cheap they can get the parts and still put together a system that will be usable by an acceptable percentage of the buying public.

    Yes, my argument is both anecdotal and based on a small sample size. Tough. Between all the corpo PC's I've dealt with, the predatory habits of big companies like Gateway, and my own vast intelligence, I still bet I'm right :)
  • who the fuck moderated this up so high?? how can this guy /ever/ judge timothy for "not reading the story" when he didn't even read the headline!!!!!!

    Goddamn you karma-whore go back to fucking AOL where you belong. The headline reads, "Gateway says bug affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems". SYSTEMS YOU SHIT BRAIN!!!!! FUCK! maybe you can't even handle AOL, seeing as you obviously can't read.

    Go back to your little high school. That is the appropriate place for illiterate, pack following, crowd pleasers such as yourself.

  • This is just like the whole problem Gateway 2000 had with the AMD K6-2 systems -- it is NOT the chip -- but the selection of components around it. With the AMD K6-2 systems, Gateway 2000 choose a sub-standard mainboard (cannot remember the vendor), largely based on cost in volume (and possibly guaranteed volume as well). Now they have what looks like to be a current draw issue that is due to the mainboard or power supply. I mean, did c|Net even bother to check if AMD is using an Athlon-certified power supply???

    I personally think AMD's track record as of late is better than Intels! Lest we forget Intel had a mainboard recall on the original SE440BX (reference i440BX chipset) mainboard due to power supplies frying the mainboard and its components. And I'm not going to go into the whole MTH (memory translator hub) fiasco and the RDRAM RIMM signal integrity that preceded it. I really would like to know what mainboard Gateway 2000 is using for this system. If its past K6-2 problem is an indicator, I'd say it's Gateway 2000 going for the lowest bidder.

    Which makes me wonder why they pay a premium for their PIII mainboards instead of using someone cheaper than Intel??? Let's see here, for Intel, use costly Intel mainboards instead of cheaper alternatives (unlike others like Micron who uses the more flexible, VIA-powered Tyan S1854 Trinity 400) ... but for AMD, use lowest bidder instead of paying extra for AMD stock ... hmmm ... First the K6-2, now the Thunderbird, that's STRIKE TWO GATEWAY 2000! [ Or was this intentional??? ]

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • ...is because they end up being noticibly faster than the prebuilt crap you can get from Gateway/Dell/Compaq and other x86 manufacturers.

    It's also more expensive for me to build my own system, but since I use quality parts I don't mind paying a little more.

    Gateway hasn't made a decent computer since the 486 days. This bug with the Thunderbird probably won't break the company, but it is bad PR at exactly the wrong time... Right when the Thunderbirds become availible.

    Oh, well.

  • If you want to get technical....

    Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems

    Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz their Thunderbird Systems?

    Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz all Thunderbird Systems?

    Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz all of their competitor's Thunderbird Systems?
  • That's funny, every benchmark I see has the Athlon beating a PIII of the same megahertz, and costing several hundred dollars less. The difference isn't always huge in integer tests, but the Athlon destroys the PIII in FP. You might want to browse around Tom's Hardware.

  • Yeah, the Athlon is a pretty nice chip, but nobody's getting the motherboard design right (yet), so all the 'benchmark' tests that use Quake are totally bogus. AGP 4x w/ superduper fastness option vs. AGP 1x w/ inadequate power is what's really being tested.

    As far as I know the Asus K7V, and other KX133 chipset baised motherboards have AGP 4x support. And pricewatch looks like you can buy them now.

    By the end of the year this should even out as the Athlon cranks up to 200Mhz bus (really 400, counts on the upswing and downswing of each cycle) and motherboard manufacturers get it right.

    Intresting roumor, where did you here it? It definitly won't be needed until we get faster memory technology, or support for multiple SDRAM (or RDRAM, which I think might saturate a 200Mhz 32bit bus).

    What I'm waiting for are the multi-way chipsets (well, not really waiting, looking forward to seeing market reaction too). It'll be intresting to see AMD chalange Intel in the high end PC server market in addition to the high end a nd low end desktop range.

  • Slashdot used to be a good technical rag. Responses to an article such as this would often be technically qualified. You would see more responses e.g. "we ran into this problem at work when we tried to load all the bays and all the slots on an inexpensive model. We sent ESR in with his scope and he discovered voltage drops of so many millivolts over such and such a time period between J1 and C5 on the such and such a motherboard, kinda looked like somebody playing Iron Butterfly on the scope." Then we might get a followup post with someone offering a thoughtful solution such as tighter voltage regulation in the power supply so that others could work around the problem. If we wanted to read rhetorical bullshit we could print off the original article and staple it to our forehead!

    DBCS!
    DSCS!
    DDCB!
  • Disclaimer: English is not my mother tongue. AFAIK, when someone in the media refers to
    "systems", they mean a whole computer, not the CPU. So, and according to the article,
    this is not the thunderbird's fault. In other words, it's not AMD's fault.
    In other words, the original poster is a bit too harsh in condemning AMD.
    Expesially calling AMD desperate? I would say the only company that is "desperate" in the CPU business, right now is Intel.

  • Read, please (Score:5)

    by DragonHawk ( 21256 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @05:22PM (#959686) Homepage Journal
    The commentary by timothy reads like an astroturf advertisment for Intel.

    *exasperated sigh*

    Doesn't anyone know the difference between quoted and unquoted text?

    timothy: According to the article, the "chip itself is not the likely cause. Instead, the flaw probably results from the overall design of the system or other components." Sounds more like a kink like a showstopper, but a disappointment for anyone in line for a Thunderbird.

    timothy states three things:
    1. Article says the problem is not with the chip.
    2. Problem is minor, not a show-stopper.
    3. Disappointment for anyone waiting for systems with the chip.

    #1 and #2 seem pretty much in favor of AMD. Number three seems pretty neutral to me, too. This would be a disappointment to anyone waiting for one of the systems, as they would now have to wait longer.

    Now, yes, krautt's comment seems rather biased, or at least jumps to conclusions, but everyone's entitled to their opinions.
  • If you want to get technical....

    [Variations on the headline deleted]

    So, what you're saying is, you read too much into the headline and assumed it was a problem with AMD's chip?

    It's not Slashdot's fault you jump to conclusions.
  • I agree - in a case like the FDIV bug, the CPU manufacturer should pick up the tab. But don't blame AMD in this case - it is Gateway's MOTHERBOARD that is at fault, not the CPU.
  • I couldn't agree more! Gateways are total crap nowadays... and I build my own machines because:

    Proprietary hardware sucks
    I like quality parts (no generic crap)
    I can blame myself if something goes wrong - I'm my own tech support!

  • "IF"? "future"? What? This is reality, things have been this way for as long as I can remember.

    "It compiles? Ship it!"

  • Another thing we don't see enough of (Score:3)

    by DragonHawk ( 21256 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @06:12PM (#959691) Homepage Journal
    My bad - sorry timothy.

    Totally off-topic at this point, but I just wanted to take the time (and bandwidth) to commend rodgerd [slashdot.org] for his apology. Most people, it seems, these days, when caught in the wrong, either ignore it or deny it outright. It takes guts to admit a mistake.

    My hat comes off for you, Sir.
  • try and buy [ a Macintosh] with a Zip disk, DVD, and built-in wireless networking... damn that was EASY
  • Geez, you'd expect that they would at least read the story before posting such bull chit.
  • I'm glad you didn't have any problems with Gateway, but I did. I had a monitor, power supply and sound card go out from a PPro system. A hard drive too, but by then it was a few years old so that's not their fault.
  • Compaq's don't count. Specially their Deskpro line which are utter pieces of junk. Stay away from them.
  • I am sure that AMD is working with them - Gateway is a huge OEM customer and those people have a tremendous amount of leverage with suppliers. Nothing in the story hints that Gateway is mad at AMD. I think it just makes Gateway look bad.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by eshaft ( 82430 )
    A motherboard or power supply problem? Strange mix of components... what exactly does a power supply do now-a-days? It didn't share the processing load, last time I checked... maybe some weird voltage regulating thing?

  • Re:So Let Them Fix It... (Score:4)

    by jonnythan ( 79727 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @07:29PM (#959698)
    Two things:

    1) THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE ATHLON. Apparently, according to the article, there is a problem with Gateway's MB or power supply. There is no indication of AMD's engineers warning against a damn thing. There is no indication that there is any problem whatsoever with the Athlon.

    2) On what grounds is the AMD chip better than anything Intel has? Most of the benchmarks I've seen have the high-MHz P III's handily defeating the Athlon in just about everything, especially games like Q3A. How is the AMD good enough for an unqualified "superior" to anything Intel has?
  • Speaking of qualifiers, here's one :)

    I currently run an Athlon I built myself a few months ago. I can't imagine building a new Intel system anytime soon, especially with the Duron's release.

    Because we like AMD and support them doesn't mean their products are faster than all of Intel's.
  • To the slashdot maintainers: Please rename the subject line of this article! Slashdot is currently acting as a FUD vehicle for Intel. For the time being, this has *nothing* to do with AMD. All this tells us, is that Gateway is unable to fingerpoint problems in their systems. Please stop this, before more damage is done. Slashdot headlines are mirrored everywhere on the net. People will make the wrong assumptions because Gateway cannot diagnose properly. Was the CNET article read properly, before posting? I wonder. Bram Stolk
  • Can we please kill this guy?
  • The reason why no one defended Intel's Coppermine, when it was clearly a chipset problem, WAS BECAUSE INTEL MADE THE CHIPSET!
  • -sigh-

    This isn't much of a suprise. Bleeding edge technology has a tenendency to break. Why do you think that all those mainstream IT managers wait 6 to 12 monthes to initiate blue sky projects?

    My 700 Athlon is working just fine, thank you. If I need extra cycles at this point, I'll get a dual (quad) proc board. As far as I'm concerned, this post should have been a /. mini-bit, but I guess it's slow today.

    Regards
  • ...is for quality systems. Look at people who are buying a computer for the first time -- while they probably won't be buying an AMD Thunderbird screamer -- they buy a Gateway, Dell, Compaq, etc., because it is a well respected brand name and there are people to go to if it doesn't work. The computer industry is one of the few industries where the finished product is very tempramental to types and brands of components used (try and buy a Dell with a Zip disk, DVD, and CD-RW... they probably won't sell it to you although it works fine), and people want the peace of mind that by buying a brand-name computer that everything will work great out-of-the-box.

    This one flop probably won't hurt Gateway at all, but many flops like this might just turn some prospective customers to other brands that have less reported problems.
  • Not suprising. I had some issues with Gateway a few years ago while I was working for a startup that didn't quite quite make it (not Gateway's fault). Between the workstations that got delayed for n weeks, and the servers that shipped with cracked leads (which showed up under heavy use as memory errors), I have written Gateway off my personal and professional vendor list.

    The price breaks were nice, but not at the expense of down time.
  • Argh! An extremely long word in FULL CAPS as the subject. That broke the layout of the main page (I have the Ten Top Comments box on)
    __
  • I'm a happy Athlon user with a non-standard system. All components are hand picked. The only problems I had were with stuff like a soundcard that behaved strangely on every other system. After removing that and installing one that's on the compatibility list, it worked fine.
    I recently installed Linux on a somewhat older Pentium system, and... 'lo and behold! On the bootup screen, it said 'Pentium with F0 0F bug detected.'
    What I want to say is, that Intel products aren't error free and that a dud configuration can screw a system up. I mean, for what reason did AMD put up that compatibility table?

    Paranoids of the world, unite!

  • Their track record is still much better than Intel's. I wouldn't suddenly consider them careless WRT the rest of the industry. While I'm defending AMD, hardware manufacture is just as hard as software programming and really is a form of programming. Imagine having to ship a product without one bug? I mean sure they have microcode updates, but still thats very very challenging.
  • Thanks for pointing that out.

    I'd assumed it was Gateway's motherboard that was to blame, since I've seen AMD approved motherboards go from 900MHz max at one rev., to 1GHz at a higher rev. (e.g. MSI 6340 1.0 -> 1.0A).

    I'd have thought they'd have been able to at least isolate it to the power supply or motherboard very quickly, but I guess it may still take them time to source an appropriate new power supply if that was the problem.
  • But you wouldn't be able to buy PCs at $400 without the selfless labour of these third-world folk who work 13 hours a day just so the average American can have Windows crash on him/her.
  • If it is a problem with the chip, then let the company fix it, and let them be...

    Does no one recall the floating-point bug in Intel chips a couple of years ago? This is hardly different. Fact is that this AMD chip is still superior to anything that Intel has. So there.
  • A tiny flaw should hardly hurt AMD, they have done a good job of catering to the consumer that cares about what goes on in his box. AMD allows more freedom in overclocking, doesn't include PSNs, and makes a better product.
  • I buy from Dell and IBM because if something goes wrong with it, their service is great.

    I bought a P201 monitor from IBM a few years ago for $2500. 2.5 years into its 3 year warranty it got fuzzy, and they replaced it with a new one.

    I bought a laptop from Dell in December, and in March it started turning itself off randomly. They had Airborne Express pick it up at 2 PM on a Wednesday and at 10 AM the next day it had been repaired and returned to me.

    In my experience though, new users are far more likely to fall for the CompUSA piece of junk because they like the $400 rebate and don't understand the first thing about the 3 years of internet service at $30/month they just bought.

  • The orignal story that this was based on is here:

    http://www.techweb.com/wire/stor y/TWB20000630S0011 [techweb.com]

    This spells it out a bit clearer that both Gateway and AMD agree it's a Gateway issue - either the motherboard or power supply.

    Originally Gateway said it's be fixed by July 10th, but that has more recently changed to July 18th. Given the specificity of the date, I assume that they now know what the issue is, and are waiting either for rev'd motherboards from Jabil, or for a shippment of an appropriately spec'd power supply.

    Interestingly AMD's web site:

    http://www1.amd.com/athlon/power [amd.com]

    Lists 52 approved power supply for 900MHz ATX, but only 37 for 1GHz ATX...

  • No, I just read the headline. It says "Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems". This is like saying "Ford Says Bug Affects 350 HP Engines". Its misleading. Gateway has problems with some motherboards - so what. What the headlines is implying is that Thunderbirds have a fundamental bug, which is simply not true.
  • Here's the offical benchmarks:


    http://www.amd.co m/products/cpg/athlon/benchmarks/benchmarks.html [amd.com]


    In some cases it's close, but Athlon is ahead of PIII on pretty much everything. On computationally intensive stuff like Photoshop, it's not even close - Athlon scorches PIII (for that matter Duron scorches PIII on floating point too):


    Photoshop benchmark [amd.com]


    The independent review sites such as Anandtech, Toms hardware, Aces, etc all have pretty much the same results, although the details obviously differ based on the exact system configuration.


    The only benchmarks I've seen where PIII beats Athlon are memory benchmarks where the PIII is running on an i840 platform with PC800 Rambus memory, or on an overclocked BX platform. For many people these arn't realistic comparison platforms, since PC800 Rambus memory is prohibitively expensive and most people do not overclock their systems.


    Anyone looking for an affordable high performance memory solution should wait until Sept/Oct for AMD's 760 chipset which supports DDR. Given Athlons 200/266MHz DDR FSB, the speedup you get with DDR should be much greater than PIII gets with Rambus memory, since PIII is limited by it's 100/133MHz FSB.

  • AMD's desperate plight for technical superiority

    You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means... :-)

  • The buggy Coppermine chipsets and motherboards were all Intel parts, so Intel was to blame. In Gateway's case they are using a Jabil motherboard (using an AMD 750 chipset), and have isolated the problem to either being the motherboard or the power supply. The AMD chipset has been around for a very long time, and has a reputation for great stability - not surprisingly Gateway do not think it is a suspect.

  • Facts, please (Score:3)

    by rodgerd ( 402 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @05:04PM (#959719) Homepage

    The bug is in Gateway systems, not AMD processors per se. That's hardly AMD turning to custard. Or a "desperate AMD" ignoring their QA teams.

    The commentary by timothy reads like an astroturf advertisment for Intel. It's bad enough when luser posters don't bother reading an article and go off half-cocked. It's inexcusable when the editors do it.

  • I am unfortunately not able to use linux as much as I would like. Most of my work is done on Winblows and Linux is a hobby for me; I am still in the early stages of enlightenment. A just got a custom system with an Athlon 800Mhz processor, and it will kick ass. I have vowed never to buy Intel becuase even in they no longer use the PSN, they still have set a precedent for such sneakiness
  • It'll be a scary day if CPU manufacturers start taking a 'release early, release often' approach.

    On the other hand, such approaches generally go hand-in-hand with putting the new releases in the end-user's hands cheaply or for free.

    AMD can release a new CPU every day, if they also send me one for free to replace yesterday's! I'll even send them the old one back! ;-)

  • I've had issues with older PCI sound cards on newer PCI 2.2-spec mainboards. Nothing new, nothing limited to AMD either.

    As far as the FPU bug, it goes in the same basket as the 100+ other errata on any Intel chip. Every mainstream microprocessor has bugs, dozens of them. Heck, my company just released a 8-bit microcontroller and, not even back from the Tawainese fab yet, we've already discovered our first errata (a small one that is easily corrected in firmware/software)! But Intel seems to take the cake and it's not just because they're #1 either.

    On with the FPU thing, I've seen some IGNORANT people get on the Quake benchmark BS. I'm sorry, but idSoftware's Quake engine uses integers for a lot of things -- but because the Intel ALU is so freak'n slow (1/3rd the speed of any K6 chip), idSoftware just found that loading integers via the FPU load instruction on the Pentium ended up being faster (even though it was some 4 instructions to 1 do to the same thing -- talk about a design flaw!). As such, even though the K6 would have actually been faster than with the original code, the "Pentium optimized" version results in the crippling the advantages of the K6 in order to better optimize an otherwise poorly designed Pentium.

    Remember, "Pentium optimized" means that this is how you must write your software to fix Intel design flaws in the Pentium (at least 25-30% of the time). Intel builds full-custom ICs which means you get the human error factor (although it does have some advantages), compared to many other firms where a lot of design is done by optimizers and other EDA tools.

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • it's more fun for us non-geeks,reading the wacky posts. i often have absolutely no knowledge (all the time)but still slashdot is my favorite site.keep up the good work---who wants a serious site,anyway?
  • Their track record is still much better than Intel's

    Are you kidding ? K6-2 had incompatibility/stability problems, specially in the graphics areas, to no end for like a year since it has been released. Most of the problems came from CPU/chipset/video card type incompatibilities. I have dealt with many of those systems myself a lot.

  • I'll bet dollars to donuts it's some piece of cheap ass equipment Gateway stuffs into there box's.
    I would like to see what other manufactures have to say about this befor I put the blame on AMD.
    For the record, I don't say this because I like AMD, but because I have had experiences with gateway that would make the most hardend IT vetran want to find a bell tower...
  • Nothing shows that Gateway is mad...but I think it makes AMD look worse, because the headline is that there is something wrong with the thunderbird, and they bury the real cause somewhere in the middle. A few people just read blubs and headlines and post comments without doing research.
    I bet a few ppl are thinking that the chip itself is flawed because of it.
  • Yes... my doubt is raised when comments that not only didn't read the article (which happens more often than not), but also didn't even understand the headline are getting modded to +3.

    I think it's time for a revolution. Break out the guilotine, and start beheading moderators.

    do I get a (-1 treasonous) ?

  • not a surprise (Score:3)

    by xeno ( 2667 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @06:36PM (#959728)
    Why is this a surprise? When the Athlon first came out, the first motherboard to become widely available was the FIC SD11. FIC rushed the SD11 product to market, and screwed up the voltage regulator design. This design error caused a periodic spontaneous reboot -- not a lot of good press for AMD, even though the fault was not with the processor.

    FIC identified and fixed the problem, and replaced the defective motherboards. I'm sure the same will happen with Gateway's systems, although I have to take issue with an earlier poster's implication that Gateway customers are seeking a premium quality product. Gateway is pretty clearly a middle-o-the-road system supplier, both in terms of price and quality. This would not be the first time the Gateway has crossed the line from their usual design scrimping into shoddy components or QA. (Not that I'm knocking Gateway; I think their products are usually a good value for the price.)

  • I use an AMD K6-2 500MHz chip on a EPoX EP-MVP3G5 M/B [epox.com] - this uses the VIA Apollo 4 chipset.

    It's only the second out of 5 motherboards I've ever had which run Windows 98 without crashing (the last was an Intel Triton III chipset with a Pentium 133).

    I have 256Mb of RAM in 2*128Mb DIMMS - one PC100 the other PC133. Even with this mix of DIMMs, things work perfectly.

    This system runs Linux nicely (always too slow of course ;), and VMWare with Win98 installed as Guest OS is adequate to my needs (running Excel to edit timesheets, CorporateSync for Palm to synchronise my PalmOS device with CorporateTime calendar).

    I'm just wondering if maybe you shouldn't just upgrade your M/B, rather than spending all that extra mulah on a new machine?

  • Why Blame AMD? It's GATEWAY'S Problem. (Score:5)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @07:38PM (#959730)
    Okay, repeat after me: "I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post. I will read the story before I post." The actual story referenced mentioned it as a problem with *Gateway's* GHz Athlon system. It is *NOT* a flaw in the chip, it is a flaw in Gateway's crappy, shitty, pissy, worthless motherboard/chipset/firmware/drivers, pick any or all of the above. Read the Techweb story at http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000630S0011 for better coverage.

    Unfortunately, the idiot who submitted the story was clearly--read his words, his bias--an Intel nut, who was ready to jump the gun and blame AMD for the problem which is Gateway's fault. Now, look at the commentary by Slashdot guy timothy right after the quote from the submitter, that it appears to be a Gateway problem not an AMD problem.

    What you must understand is that motherboards by Gateway, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Packard-Bell (yuck), and most other big-name systems manufacturers are substandard pieces of junk. To begin with, they are usually so tightly integrated that they have no available AGP slot and few PCI slots, with integrated crappy audio unfit for an old Gravis Ultrasound, integrated video that's four or six generations behind and shares system memory instead of using its own, an integrated NIC which is okay since a NIC is a NIC is a NIC but often it has an IRQ conflict with whatever you plug into the PCI slot, and uses ancient in-house circuitry designed for older chips and manufactured in some third-world hellhole by people who are more skilled with using stone implements than modern silicon-working machinery, by third-tier motherboard manufacturers whom you wouldn't trust to make a decent wristwatch much less a functional motherboard. The BIOSes are almost always in-house vendor-specific stuff, and usually nonstandard and way behind in their support of anything recent. Which is why when you buy a Gateway system it comes with, in addition to the OS, a "system restoration CD" with custom drivers because Windows doesn't even work properly on such a nonstandard shitty motherboard with crufty old custom logic without special nonstandard drivers. The Gateway 1 GHz motherboard in question is manufactured by Jabil. Ever heard of them? Few have or ever will, because they produce crap that no one would ever buy unless it were in a Gateway box with pretty cow-colored cardboard all over it.

    This is all, completely, totally, absolutely, undoubtedly a Gatway problem. AMD's Athlon does not bear any responsibility whatsoever for this. Intel zealots will want to exploit it and blame AMD, but the fact remains that the Athlon gives superior performance numbers now that the L2 cache has been integrated on-die, and that there is no problem with the 1 GHz or any other Athlon.
  • Actually it does imply the bug is in the Athalon.
    Now if you stop and think about it, You can see that it may not be the Chip, but there particular 1Gz system as a whole.
    The fact that gateway specificaly mentions AMD tells me that they are trying to announce a problem in such away that it diverts attention away from there problem.
  • No, actually the bug was found in the AMD 1GHz Athlon "Thunderbird" (gee, how many names do they have to give this thing?) CPU. Gateway found the glitch in AMD's devices. Here's some other stories about the same topic: Interestingly enough, Athlon is also a name for controlled absorption naproxen formulation for once-daily administration. Ironic, isn't it? [ibm.com]
  • AFAIK that was a videocard driver/chipset problem not a CPU problem
  • ObTopic: I am planning on buying a new motherboard+CPU soon, and am strongly considering an AMD Athlon- or Thunderbird-based system. Anyone have any comments on how well such systems work with VMware? I know VMware dislikes my current 400 MHz AMD K6-2.

    I have a 600Mhz Athlon, and it ran the 30 day demo of VMware ok (under FreeBSD 4.0, which I think was more or less the Linux version, with some FreeBSD kernel loadable modlues/devices replacing the Linux KLM/Ds). Of corse all I ran under VMware was more Unixes, since I don't have a spare Windows licence (I do have a spare BSDI BSD/OS licence, and a "OS" I wrote in class in '92, and it is a great testbed for PicoBSD).

  • I can confirm that Compaq DeskPro's are a load of junk. While working in my previous company I made an order for about 8 of these machines (the company used them before I arrived). On testing I found them to be unreliable, easily crashable, and caused greater financial loss per week in lost man hours than the cost of the system. Steer Clear. c0rarc
  • "Gateway may have shipped some PCs with a PSU that may have a small problem".

    Oh look. It's no longer interesting.
    --
  • Gateway reports problems with their 1GHz Thunderbird Systems

    Simple, to the point and correct. I agree with the previous poster, the headline implies that there is a general problem with the Thunderbird systems, not that the problem lies with Gateway. That is, if you only read the headline.

  • AMD should do... (Score:3)

    by NoWhere Man ( 68627 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @05:05PM (#959738) Homepage
    "It involves the 1-GHz with the Thunderbird. We don't know the cause. We are looking into the problem," the spokesman said. "We think it is a motherboard or power supply issue."

    If AMD determined the exact problem, or worked along side Gateway to fix it or find a solution, it would show alot of support for thier product. Right now this makes the Thunderbird look really bad, despite the fact its is clearly not AMDs fault.
  • You shouldn't be using the K7V with a T-Bird. IIRC, The K7V is a KX133 based board. As annoying as it is, The KX-133 does not (officially) support T-Birds [anandtech.com] (I think it's a custom timing issue, but I'm not sure). You need one with a KT-133 chipset, of which we're still waiting on some. I find it unlikely, though, that Asus will make Slot-A KT-133 versions of the K7V. :-( (Because it's a killer mobo) Not because of any particular malice, but because as far as I know, only OEM's were supposed to be getting Slot-A T-Birds.

    Even the benchmark systems had to use a different setup [tomshardware.com].

    Sorry to rain on your parade. Having said this though, Tom's [tomshardware.com] managed to get a T-Bird 750 to go on a K7V with the latest BIOS, however they couldn't overclock it.

    It's probably not what you wanted to hear, but t's all I've been able to dig up. (Having said that it made me feel a little less cheated having bought my 'Classic' Athlon 6 weeks before the T-Bird came out).

    Swinging back on-topic, it definitely sounds like the fault isn't with the processor. Most likely either Gateway aren't regulating the voltage too well, or their design's a bit squiffy. I remember that my friend's MSI Athlon system seemed to have a voltage issue, which was sorted by switching to the K7V.

  • The fact that Gateway is only having trouble with 1GHz Thunderbirds is a dead giveaway that they have a power supply issue. If you look up recommended power supplies [amd.com] on the AMD website, you'll notice that an awful lot drop off the list as soon as you spec a 1GHz processor.

    When I build my dual processor Athlon box later this year (waiting on the AMD 770 chipset and Mustang core CPUs like the rest of the world), I'm going to use a PC Power and Cooling [pcpowercooling.com] 350watt power supply. That'll handle anything I'm going to throw at it.

  • CPU manufacturers start taking a 'release early, release often' approach.

    I'm not saying that AMB is, but i could forsee a future where under fierce competition with Intel, the two companies get into a race to be the first with the ###Ghz processor and consequently quality and testing get sidelined in favour of marketing.

    In the past, I'd say that no company would want to release CPU prematurely given that bad publicity would result, but then again, it never Microsoft to take this approach. Sigh.

    Those 'Intel Inside' stickers could serve as a useful warning in future ;-)

  • Gateway has confirmed that the problem does not lie with the Thunderbird Processor or the AMD 750 Chipset., see www.jc-news.com/pc for more.

    Second of All, this 'news' is several days old at best. I feel that slashdot is a great place, but if the news is several days old, and the issue has been pinpointed, why not point that out? Please, at least do SOME research before you post stories. The first leaks on the story date back to before 6/30/00!!!!!

  • Q&R engineers warned AMD? (Score:3)

    by cnj ( 87028 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @05:09PM (#959743) Homepage
    guess that's what happens when you ignore your Q&R engineers and release improperly tested hardware to market

    I don't see anywhere in the article that would lead to this conclusion, or even give the impression that AMD's engineers had any clue that any problems would arise. In fact, the article states that it was very likely that there was another component in the system causing the problems.

    I've heard a lot of horror stories from G2k, but all my personal experience (one computer for one relative) hasn't been bad. I even knew one friend who was able to get brand new system gratis when CIH fried his old one.

    Take it for what its worth. I'm still looking at the AMD line for my next CPU--unless Digital rises form the dead :(

    --

  • AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH (Score:5)

    by levendis ( 67993 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @05:10PM (#959744) Homepage
    YAEOSMH (Yet Another Example Of Slashdot Media Hype)

    Read the headline - oh no! Athlons have a bug! I knew it!

    Read the actual story - oh wait, Gateway announced that their motherboard may have a slight problem. Or maybe even their power supply. (How hard is it to build a power supply?) The same thing could affect Intel, Cyrix, G4, or Sparc motherboards, and HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PROCESSOR.

    Sorry, I'm a bit pissed about slashdot content lately. Is it just me, or have their been ALOT of crappy stories lately, as well as alot of missed ones.
  • No, I just read the headline. It says "Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems".

    Which is completely, one-hundred percent correct and true.

    This is like saying "Ford says Bug Affects 350 HP Engines".

    No, because unlike Gateway, Ford makes all the engines that go in their cars. Or at least, brands them that way.

    But, just for the sake of argument, say Ford didn't make their own engines. And say Ford had a problem with one trim line using the new Acme ICE350 engine, that did not effect other brands of engine. The headling "Ford Discovers Problem With ICE350 Mustangs" seems pretty reasonable to me.

    Its misleading.

    Headlines, by definition, are short, one-line descriptions of a larger story. They will never hold the whole story. If you depend on them for such, you will be burned. And it looks like you were. Again, not Slashdot's fault.

    What the headlines is implying is that Thunderbirds have a fundamental bug ...

    I certainly didn't see that implication. Again, no one else is responsible if you read meaning where there isn't any. Next time, read the story before you start adding meaning to the headline.

  • rodgerd wrote: "The commentary by timothy reads like an astroturf advertisment for Intel. It's bad enough when luser posters don't bother reading an article and go off half-cocked. It's inexcusable when the editors do it."

    I really have no desire to advertise Intel; they do that pretty well themselves, shiny suits and all. The processors in my home machines are both AMD (A K6, a K6-2 and I'm about to skip the K6-3 and build an Athlon system). I've been thinking about a laptop, too, and for that my two top choices are both non-Intel.

    Who knows? I may have an Intel-based system one day (I have before) but I think you misinterpret what I wrote. Pointing out a system-delaying bug is not the same as comdemning -- it sounds like Gateway is doing the responsible thing by announcing the problem and investigating it. That will make future Athlons less susceptible to the problem.

    That's all :)

    timothy

  • You guys gotta read the headlines better. It says the bug effects the systems.
    From the article: Gateway executives said the chip itself is not the likely cause.
    "We think it is a motherboard or power supply issue."

    Case in point.

  • I did read the story, as a matter of fact I read it several hours before it was posted. It makes the problem look like AMD's fault, aside from a very few quotes from the Gateway reps. That's beside the point, however. My point is, this article was apparently written to dis AMD, and slashdot bit. Anyone simply browsing for news would come away with impression that AMD's 1Ghz processors sucks. Considering the popularity of slashdot, this is a remarkably irresponsible posting.
  • While the article draws no conclusions, the slashdot headline implies that amd is guilty of faulty quality assurance testing, thus saying that the problem is with the cpu.
  • Man, comments from people who read too much into headlines being moderated up to 4, and then this crap.

    Topic, anyone?

    Yes, IP banning isn't perfect because some people can change IPs easily (e.g., dialup modem pools) while others may get stuck with a bad rap (proxy servers, anyone who happens to dial-in and get someone's previous IP, etc.).

    Life's not perfect, either. Get over it.

    ObTopic: I am planning on buying a new motherboard+CPU soon, and am strongly considering an AMD Athlon- or Thunderbird-based system. Anyone have any comments on how well such systems work with VMware? I know VMware dislikes my current 400 MHz AMD K6-2.
  • Destroyed! I guess I'll help sweep up the flaming wreckage that was once the body of the guy who submitted this story.
  • What's "locking up" here? The CPU? One of the glue chips on the motherboard? The OS? That article doesn't tell us anything. The big question is whether the CPU/motherboard combination stops processing instructions, or whether it makes errors that crash the OS. If the latter, there's the possibility that other errors that don't crash the OS are occuring, which is not good, but is a very different situation.

  • Re:So Let Them Fix It... (Score:3)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Monday July 03, 2000 @08:24PM (#959759) Homepage Journal
    2) On what grounds is the AMD chip better than anything Intel has? Most of the benchmarks I've seen have the high-MHz P III's handily defeating the Athlon in just about everything, especially games like Q3A. How is the AMD good enough for an unqualified "superior" to anything Intel has?

    Depends on what you are mesuring. A stright per Mhz comparisin isn't really any more useful then a per transistor rating. Granted they are done all the time, and people fixate on them.

    More useful are the per dollar rating (and you probbably need to include the cost fo the support chips at the very least, whole system is better). After all most people don't go to the store to pick which 800Mhz system is faster (or which 190HP car is faster), but to pick which $700 PC (or $18,000 car) is faster. (assuming faster is what they are after, as opposed to quieter, safer, less poluting, or a nicer color -- for the car or the PC!)

    Useful for another set of people is "screw the money, of the systems I can lay hands on, which is faster". Maybe an expensave quad XENON with RDRAM, maybe a single fast AMD K7 (for non-multithreaded FP bound apps). Of corse an Alpha (lower clock speed and all) toasts 'em both (at least for SPEC like apps), if you can recompile the app. Or with the car analogy again, maybe a Ferari, maybe the Lotus, or maybe even something that isn't streat legal at all.

    Useful for a far smaller set of people is the "which is faster per Mhz", and those are mostly people trying to figure out why a system is fast. Not people intrested in buying it for that reason.

    Other people are intrested in waste heat given off, and power sucked up (people buying portables).

    On all of those, diffrent applications may be more important. Quake III to you, POVRay for me, Kernel compiles to Linus, how fast AOL loads for my mom.

    Others might be intrested in the politics of the company (do they donate money to polititions I hate?). Or how much the enviroment is hurt per CPU made. Or how the workers are treated.

    Oh, and lastly, there have been benchmarks the AMD womps the Intel at, even the slow slow extrnal cache 1Ghz models. The "NT 3D content creation" ones, which seem to have lots of FP, and are too big to fit whole in either cache for example. The newer Thunderbirds (less cache, but at full speed, even with a relitavly narrow bus) do quite well. They are per clock competitave with the Intel's on many benchmarks, beating them on quite a few (quite a few being more then half I think, competatave is normally with in a few percent). More importantly they are per dollar competitave, beating them on almost evey single benchmark I have seen.

    Go look at the Thunderbird benchmarks again, or point me at URLs of the P-III soundly beating the Thunderbird. (it could be, I only looked at a few benchmark pages, I can only look at so many 15 page long half bar graph articles before I've had enough!)

    I don't know if the per dollar thing is enough to claim AMD is (unqualifyed) superior. In my mind the max speed you can actually buy, plus the per dollar, in the vast majority of benchmarks would at the very least rate a qualifyed superior, possably even unqualifyed. Possably. I would definilty give it a qualifyed, like "for POVRay, it kicks Intel's ass on uniprocessers", or "per dollar, it kicks everyone's ass, for POVRay at least".

    Then again if nobody benchmarked your app, or if your value scheme is not even reprsented by a benchmark, all those things are worthless.

  • Supply problems?

    Tell me, where can you buy a 1Ghz pentium? On the other hand, 1Ghz Athlons are fairly easy to find. And not only that, 1ghz Thunderbirds are also easily found. Supply problems my ass.
  • I bought my new computer a few weeks ago (pre-Thunderbird), and the biggest disappointment I had was that the GHz Athlons weren't available anywhere! The closest I could find was a shipment of fifty 950MHz processors from Ingram Micro for $40,000. (Which of course I did NOT get... I found 800s in stock for much much less ;)).

    Anyway... I wouldn't let this scare you away from Athlons in general. My system, built from scratch (with quality but not "AMD recommended" motherboard/power supply) is as stable as a rock and very fast.

  • Read the headline - oh no! Athlons have a bug! I knew it!

    Read it again:

    Gateway Says Bug Affects 1GHz Thunderbird Systems

    Read the story, and Gateway has discovered a problem in their 1GHz Thunderbird systems.

    Let's see.

    Gateway Says. Yup.

    Bug Affects. Yup.

    1GHz Thunderbird Systems. Yup.

    Perhaps hype, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

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