E8400/8500 degradation myth possibly busted?

[jonny_ftm]

Wolfdale degradation myth possibly busted?

Im sure a lot of you have had this happen, you clock your new e8X00 up and run the usual torture test
until your find the max stable OC @ some vcore, and temps you are comfortable with. That's the
Idea right. Right!!

By now your prime stable for >8 hours, and your happy because your at 4ghz (or more) and you
didn't even break the bank when you made that sweet CPU purchase. Still with me?

Ok now at some point ( Next day/Next week) you'll run that torture test again and then OMG!!!
WTF??? Prime95 FATAL ERROR!! But it used to be prime stable for hours and now it's failing in
less than 5-10 minutes? Instantly that horrifying thought comes to mind "Degradation".

Ok so that's the scenario for most. At least it was for me. Iv'e had this happen with two E8400's
so far. The first one I upped the vcore passed 1.4 and after a couple of days when prime started failing
I thought for sure this is the symptoms of the dreaded degradation problem. The second E8400 I decided
I would never go past the 1.36 safe (or safer) limit (actually it's never been passed 1.33), and I
would not see this problem again, Wrong!! I did, but this time I was determined to figure this out!


And here is what I found:

If my system is either off, or has been at Idle for a long period of time (i.e 18 - 24 hours) and I run prime
(especially the 10k FFT's) It will fail in < 5 minutes sometimes < 1 min. If I then run prime again it will take
prime a little longer to fail but maybe still < 5 mins. If I run It again it will take a lot longer to fail > 20 mins.
And then I run it once more Bam!!! Smooth sailing no more failing, It's back to the stable state it was
initially. 10k priming for hours on end.

So why?
Answer: Not sure but it seems apparent that it's needs to get nice and warm to be prime stable, and
maybe It's not warm in a literal sense, I just don't know. However It does seem to need this so called
"warm up period" more often to become stable when the ambient room temps are lower than 70F or so.

Please note these are just my findings on my rig, I would like to ask you guys to put this to the test
to see if this "Warm Up Period" holds true with others. If you would like to participate I urge you
to use Prime95 with 10k FFT to test with. I have found the 10k FFT's to put the most stress on the
wolfdales!

Thanks

For me, all your symptoms are also real degradation. It's not a car to warm up (here it's electronic, not mechanic). The temperature makes electrons move more "crazely", let's say it like this, exactly as vcore does. When you increase temperature or vcore, the electrons will dig new paths outside of the normal path in the silicone. It's a complex mechanism ending in a physical degradation of the chip circuits. Now, when you increase temperature (warm), you hopefully reproduce a closer situation of vcore increase, at the electron level. I'm sure, if you give it small vcore increase, you won't need that "warm period", for a while at least.

Increasing the frequency up to 4GHz is a major thermal producer. People do still believe that temperature is only related to vcore because of these "thermal guides for C2D/C2Q" that you all know and that were written for 65nm CPUs. If you really well test your CPU, you'll know that increasing frequency without touching the vcore or by increasing it only a marginal part, it will lead to a dramatic temperature increase. This is because of the smaller 45nm build. Making transistors run 50-100&#37; of their rated frequency will produce a major heat. Less heat than with 65nm chips, but... at 45nm technology, that lower heat is more harmful than higher temperatures on 45nm chips

Your story is just a confirmation that these 45nm chips die easier than most think. I have no doubt, in few months, we'll see newer 45nm revisions giving what G0 gave to B3 stepping

After the death of "Power = Frequency" theory, we see again the limits of silicone. Intel won't be able to push it to 35nm and lower building process. That's why they're going multicore. This will give them few years up to some 8-16-24 multicore plateforms... But the real question is, for how long? A new technology should come soon, or a replacement to the silicone that reached really its limits