Mike McCarty wrote: > No, just cheaply designed. There are MANY processors which cannot > run GIMPS, for example, because they have "good enough for normal > case" cooling designs. Change the above to read "MANY systems" instead of "MANY processors". As you have noted, it is the bad cooling design that causes the problem...not the processor. >> (possibly in the BIOS) *may* be able to slow the CPU down if it >> exceeds some defined temperature threshold, but that's a >> cross-your-fingers type of safeguard against a failed cooling system. > > You completely missed my point. Dismissing this as "well, your > hardware shouldn't do that" is > > S-T-U-P-I-D > > because, even though it means the hardware is marginal at best, > it is a hint that > > THERE MAY BE A DEFECT IN THE SOFTWARE. So, you are saying that if I run the GIMPS torture test and my system overheats then there "may" be a defect in the GIMPS software? > And that should not be ignored. > > My point wasn't that his or any CPU *should* be overheated > by bad software. My point was that hints that there might > be a defect in the software should not be ignored. I think (hope) you mean *could*. FWIW, I have a Dual Xeon 2.80GHz system with 2GB of RAM. It runs my DNS server, web server, etc. I also run VMware and normally have at least 2 virtual machines running. One an XP VM the other some variant of Linux. At times I run a RHELv4 team with 4 systems plus the XP. During the day time I limit GIMPS to running on 2 CPUs (hyper-threading enabled) and nice value at 19. At night, a cron job runs and gives GIMPS all 4 CPUs and a negative nice value. On some summer days, since my wife is rather slim, I don't turn on the A/C until the room temp is above 30. My system is on 24/7. Never had a heat issue. But, I do check my fans and dust out the system on a regular basis. Need to do that when you live in Taipei and you have 3 house cats. Sorry, I don't buy into your theory that overheating may be hinting at "software with defects". IMHO, if that were the case the virus/hackers of the world would be putting out "defective" code with the goal of burning up everyones systems. :-)
