There's no myth just a lapse of understanding by users hence they assume too much because they can't explain what actually is happening.
We just need to work together to figure it out and discuss idea's and possibilities without biting each other, since none of us are Intel employees here and we all want to know. It's not aomething only limited to 45nm Wolfdales.
Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNutz View Post
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".
This happened with my 65nm Phenom and Q6600, Phenom more than Q6600. Around 8 other users I know have had this with Phenom and I did with 6x B2 Phenoms, 1x E6750, 1x E6850 and 2x Q6600 B3/G0. I've not pushed my E8400 yet.
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.
With my Q6600, if I leave it off for say more than 3 days, it doesn't boot any MHz at any volts above or below stock. That's until I bootup stock, use it for about an hour and then reboot to change settings. Next shot I try 4G is a piece of cake at 1.38V boot, stock HSF but stability is still not there until I prime it bits on and off. Then if I reboot and set my previous stable settings of 450x8 1.36V, it'll test fully Linpack 32b/TAT/P95 stable. I then get no issues leter.

But yep, it did degrade from 3.85G 1.36V stable to 3.6G 1.36V stable max, not in a night, but after 2 weeks.
Overnight stability loss is quite impossible unless your real Vdd pin volts were at or above ~1.36V 45nm. It would usually mean your stability test never covered the chip area's which were unstable the first time round, Prime 95 is not the be it all end. If it's severely unstable later even in a few hours after perfect stability i.e. bench SPi at X MHz Y Volts, then you can tell quite clearly if degradation took place, no need to go further. This is why max MHz you may never get after once on any CPU.