Quote Originally Posted by jonny_ftm View Post
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% 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

Interesting, based on what you're saying at some point the "warm up" to stability
for my cpu will eventually over time become more difficult at the same vcore possibly
indicating real degradation. So to test this I will keep my vcore at the 1.328v and
frequency at 3970mhz for the next week or so to see If this degradation will occur.
I will also run SuperPI, Prime, OCCT, games, and benchmarks as much as possible
to place a lot of stress on my system.