Look out for stolen AMD chips!

[danrok]

There might be a large quantity of stolen defective chips in circulation according to this atricle:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20498

[Kato_mAd_HATter]

err... 6,000.... that sucks if you bought a broken chip

[cadaveca]

re-enabled chaches on semprons, and raised multi's on other chips. Wish they's share the secrets so we can get our chips faster.

Also adding heatspreaders to mobile chips. the heatspreaders are missing the 2-d matrix design.

[dsio]

since diamonds are often illegal to use for bringing wealth from one country to another, i guess technology is the next best thing. buy 300 FX55s in zimbabwe off some crook, bring them to australia, sell them to another crook at half the price you bought them for... pocket 150,000AU$ that you would otherwise have left back at home... people are doing it, sooo..... just how genuine are FX55s you bought in bulk off some dude at a street corner in Harare?

just my complete speculation but we do know that people are smuggling high end chips as a means to bring their money to their new home, and this would be the perfect way for these idiots to flog off bulk remarked cpus.

Sounds like a good way to get them into circulation.

[bradmax57]

Originally Posted by dsio

just how genuine are FX55s you bought in bulk off some dude at a street corner in Harare?
Sounds like a good way to get them into circulation.

I guess its a bit like buying a pirate dvd in the street, in the end you pay for what you get,..........normally

[trodas]

In DVDs, some did not get other chances - we in R2 region are forbidded to get R1 DVDs
So the only one way to get around the nasty cuts (they are able to cut 7min from even StarWars Attack of the Clones movie!!!) is to get the movie pirately/on the street/smuggle it from US

I doing this pretty often

But faulty chip is another thing What is faulty chip are good for? Who buys them? If they aren't run, ppls will return them and the buyer waste it's money

[danrok]

I think these chips do work, but they have been modified. They probably run slower. They're more likely to turn up in full systems which would be sold to people who don't know about CPU's.

[trodas]

Well, as long as they work, the average Joe probably never notice a thing. Current CPUs are enought powerfull to move most things smoothly, so... So average Joe get, what he pay for

[cloasters]

Un-thought of vistas open before me. Am I screwin' up bad by not being a crook? Then again, I wonder if airport security machines mess up EEPROM? Or is that the whole idea?

[cadaveca]

Ive got 5 different clients who take shuttle boxes overseas - at least every five weeks those machines get x-rayed, scanned, and god knows what else...and all of them are still running just fine, so I imagine it should not be a problem getting stuff through an airport. You now have to declare with some postal carriers that you are sending PC parts, and in the case of some parts, serial numbers and such must be legible on the outside of the box.

[danrok]

The question you might ask is "Are these chips stolen or did AMD just sell them out of the back door on the sly?".

[DiabloAbogado]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

re-enabled chaches on semprons, and raised multi's on other chips. Wish they's share the secrets so we can get our chips faster.

Also adding heatspreaders to mobile chips. the heatspreaders are missing the 2-d matrix design.

I'm with Cadaveca! Show us how! Anyway, I read a couple years ago about people hijacking trucks full of the new (then anyways) P4 chips. Several million in mechandise per truck. One truck and I'd be set! "Trade ya 50 brand new P4's for that car..."

[Kato_mAd_HATter]

ya and then they will find you easy because ppl with 40 chips is suspicious"hey the guy over there just gave me the chips I never knew they were illega" and some one with some million chips is just a dead give away "honist officer I thought that was my truck that was full of broken chips... ya broken chips that I can keep"

lol

[GrahamGarside]

what I don't understand is why they dispose of them. They must be operational on some level unless these crooks are ust selling dead systems. maybe at extremely low speeds and voltages and with certain functions disabled but couldn't they donate them to educational departments or developing countries?

[Kato_mAd_HATter]

na that would be a waste of money in AMD eyes it's just the saying "If I can't have it, no one will" If AMD can't have the profets they would rather dispose of them.

[GrahamGarside]

even from a financial point of view are their large tax benefits from charitable donations?

[Kato_mAd_HATter]

personly I really Hve no idea why they would throw out chips that arun like only .1 volt less than stock, or can only reach a stable clock of 800MHz-1GHz many ppl could use them just maybe they would rather sell chips than give them away

[DiabloAbogado]

Yea, but these companies live off reputation. Imagine all the crap they'd get. "You donated crippled chips to help education? Irony?"

[GrahamGarside]

but if these chips can actually function, but may need say the L2 halfing/disabling or running at slow speeds and low voltages, or maybe sse/mmx units disabling then just think how much of a service they would be doing donating them to organisations that can barely scrape Pentium based systems together, they could be the chip company with a heart, fair enough some chips are obviously beyond use, but if these stolen faulty chips are actually ending up in systems working in some state then it just seems such a waste to me that they were to be destroyed, it's like all the food supermarkets chuck just as it reaches it's sell by date rather than feeding the homeless or disadvantaged

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by GrahamGarside

it's like all the food supermarkets chuck just as it reaches it's sell by date rather than feeding the homeless or disadvantaged

IMHO, there are two things at work here Graham:

1) There is a certain class of people who feel they are ENTITLED to what others have. When you give, they demand that you give more. This is wrong. While my beliefs may obligate me to help those in need, that does not imply that those in need are entitled to what I have. It's a difference in attitude.

2) This actually follows from 1. If AMD were to give away those defective chips (or the supermarkets were to give away that food) and something bad were to happen because of it (or that supermarket were to give away that food, and someone got sick eating it), the legal liabilities would be enormous. Why should the company undertake that risk when it is getting nothing in return?

When I was working in the monitor manufacturing business, the company I worked for had a policy that, if we had a defective unit (one that wouldn't meet spec) but otherwise worked, we would put the unit in a 'hold' pile. Once/month, we would go through the hold pile, and units that were unusable would be scrapped, but units that were otherwise functional but simply failed to meet spec would be donated to local charities. We stopped that policy when we were sued because a unit that had poor focus was given to a lady who had bad eyesight to start with. She developed headaches from using the unit because of the poor focus (increased eye strain). We started salvaging as much of the units as we could, and scrapping the rest. In the long run, that policy ended up saving us money, where the previous policy of donating units cost us money, but we also ended up creating more waste, and a lot of people who could have made use of those monitors now don't get them.