Free exchange of A64 Winchester core for Venice core?

[Firejack]

Recently I've not enjoyed much success in any of the hardware I've purchased. There has always been some compatibility issue with an existing component in my machine. This is after 9 years of buying computer hardware and researching as much as possible from the Internet and Magazines before I buy anything.

The last purchase I bought was an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester before Christmas. Great buy… but it has a serious flaw and that’s the poor integrated memory controller which is effectively faulty in my opinion.

It simply doesn't deliver the promise of offering support for upto 4GB's of DDR3200 memory.
Winchester's are advertised as supporting 4*Double-sided memory at DDR333.
Also offering support for 4*single-sided memory at DDR400.

I’ve tried mixtures of 4*Corsair TwinX double sided at DDR333 – didn’t work. Tested 4*Crucial single-sided at DDR400 - didn’t work either, even at DDR333. I’ve also tried the memory in different motherboard with the same processor and the problem still remains.

You may point out neither of the memory I used was on AMD’s approved list. However I’m yet to find any motherboard that is tested to support the exact same model AMD uses. So I just purchase quality memory.

Now I see in the reviews of Venice cores this problem seems to of been fixed. It runs 4*double-sided memory at DDR400 (1T) and 4*single-sided memory at DDR400 (2T).

Now I need to upgrade to 2GB’s of memory….. which means I need a new Athlon 64 also? This seems totally out of order to me! All these needless replacements of faulty revisions of components is becoming too expensive. Why does it feel like we are paying for hardware company’s mistakes/ poor design? Something that seems to becoming more common.

Shouldn’t we be entitled to a free exchange of a Winchester for Venice core since the Winchester is obviously of a faulty design? After all, it doesn’t perform as advertised.

Discuss

[Allen]

Why, after testing your CPU and it didn't work to the specifications, did you not RMA it?

[Lee H]

Strange - I have a winchester with 2 x 512 Mb Corsair TwinX-XL 3200C2PRO and 2 x 512 Mb Corsair Xpert 3200XL all running @ 400 Mhz on an A8N SLI.

I had to relax the Cas timings from 2 to 2.5 but its works fine and flies when using large files for editting and also loading of game levels is a lot quicker.

[Firejack]

Allen - Unfortunately because of the nature of this compatibility issue in that a Winchester will work with 4*DDR400 in as many cases as it will not. So returning it may result in being billed because during the testing phase on return it had worked in another combination of parts.
And originally I had 1GB of memory but only got another 1 GB a few months after the Winchester so couldn't test the 2 GB configuration for problems until long after my 30-day return period had ended were I was free to send back the processor.

Wildmonkey - Interesting, I use a MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum and was able to test on a Abit AV8 both of which had the same problem. Wonder if Nforce 4 boards have some sort of tolerance built it.

[redlight]

i dont know much about memory but i have a 3.2gig winchester running at 2200mhz
using 10% overclock in the bios on a asus a8v deluxe with 4x512mb ddr400 cheapo ram £29 each from savastore and runs like a dream with my clocked galaxy 6600gt
my 3dmark03 is 20115 runs 24hours most days never crashes or complains guess im lucky or maybe someone will tell me why recommended ram does not work and the generic ram does

[arthurleung]

Give a bit more voltage to the processor, more voltage to the ram, more voltage to the chipset, everyone can run 4 sticks there is no reason why you can't.

[StormPC]

Well I think AMD shoud give you a new CPU just because you want one.

[JimmyBoy]

Well I think AMD shoud give you a new CPU just because you want one.

i'll take a fx-55