E8400/8500 degradation myth possibly busted?

[CrazyNutz]

Isn't the symptom that you are experiencing a bit different than the standard cpu degradation symptoms? It seems your and tranceaddict's symptoms are ramdom where mine and others are not at all. If my chip fails at an old clock it fails in at the exact same time, to the minute, every time. It even scales up consistently at each clock - add .01v and it passes 5 minutes, add.025v and it passes 17 min., add .035 and it passes 30min. etc etc... I've never had it fail then pass then fail at the same clock/voltage.

I see degradation like this -

1. get a fresh chip
2. run stability tests and record settings from stock up to max stable OC (testing every notch of vcore on the way up to find min. vcore for each clock)
3. Go ahead and have fun benchmarking (in my case vcore up to 1.42v and fsb 545)
4. Test chip a week or more later with same tests at same clocks and settings
5. If chip cannot pass identical tests at identical settings, but can pass with a voltage bump of x notches, chip seems to have degraded
6. If chip needs the same amount of voltage increase to pass each test, then the degradation seems consistent. Ex. - needs .05v at every clock to pass the same tests as a week ago

If the chip already has symptoms, it's too late to apply the above method.

Of course there are other variables in the system, but in a nutshell I think the above steps could tell you something. I tried that method out of the box and that is what I found. After the fact I also tried fresh ram kit and two other mobos - P5E and P5K-Premium, to see if I could get the same low v clocks, but nope.

I agree with what you are saying, but a few times I've seen you post "It's stable again" (Maybe not at your original clocks), so there may be a mixed
issue with your CPU, a little degradation, and a little of what I'm experiencing.

What I, and Tranceaddict are seeing are very similar, he also has the exact
same mobo/bios version as me. But I do agree if you are "never" able to make it stable at the Initial settings then It would likely be degraded.

Like situman suggests a poll would be good at this point, however we need to clearly define what criteria must be met to clam degradation.