Processor question

Fanny Cradock

Can anyone tell me the difference between an AMD 3000+ "tray" processor and a boxed one?

ie http://www.comtech.de/product_info.php?pID=1098 Tray

and

http://www.comtech.de/product_info.php?pID=1987

Is the first one (tray) refurbished/returned hence the price difference?

aaf

The tray version is processor only. The boxed version comes with a heatsink, which you need for cooling processors.

duridian

There is also some sort of difference in the warranty agreement between boxed 'retail' cpus and tray 'oem' cpus I believe. Retail packaged products typically have a longer warranty period - often as much as 3 years (even lifetime on some retail products (eg. the retail BFG 6600GTOC graphics card is lifetime warranteed.) OEM products on the other hand are usually from 30 days to a few months by comparison. They aren't an inferior product, you are just getting a price cut by making a compromise on the guarantee of the product, a bit like cutting down the 3 year service guarantee knocks about €150 off the price if you were buying a new Dell pc from their website. In the case of a cpu you are also not getting the standard heatsink which many people will not use anyway, opting instead for a more expensive cooler. With OEM drives you get a bare drive - no cables, no screws or bracketry, OEM mice/keyboards/soundcards/graphics - no software other than drivers. Never actually heard of OEM motherboards, don't think it would be practical as hardly anyone would want a bare board with no I/O shield and no auxilliary cabling for USB/Firewire/other ports.

paddy

There is no difference in the two warranty's!, retail is for the customer, nice shiny box, a few free games/software bundles etc. Oem materials are for system builders who don't need the add-ons or extra's, shiny box's etc. They are buying in bulk!
Do you honestly think the likes of Dell/Compaq & other system builders are going to buy products with a 30 day warranty? I think you are confusing Oem with reconditioned/refurbished product's.

The_Conductor

paddy wrote:

There is no difference in the two warranty's!, retail is for the customer, nice shiny box, a few free games/software bundles etc. Oem materials are for system builders who don't need the add-ons or extra's, shiny box's etc. Thay are buying in bulk!
Do you honestly think the likes of Dell/Compaq & other system builders are going to buy products with a 30 day warranty? I think you are confusing Oem with reconditioned/refurbished product's.

Not so......
I was a systems intergrator for a number of years and often bought OEM products. In general OEM means bare naked product, often in an antistatic bag, often without even software. In specific instances there might be a difference in the product or the terms guaranteeing the product. An example of this might be an OEM graphics card from ATI versus the consumer boxed version. Without any information anywhere to the contrary- these are in fact two different products- the OEM product has its memory underclocked and the core GPU running at a slower speed, while the retail version is throttled. Its rare to come across crap like that happening though.

When consumers buy the likes of an OEM processor- it often comes from a batch which has failed in some manner at a higher core speed- but works properly when retested at a lower speed. This is often the case. Its not selling a defective product in any regard though- because it has been tested successfully at the lower speed by the manufacturer. Back in the days of the 200Mhz Celeron chips- it was common practice for many of us to discuss the serial numbers of specific batches of these chips- often it was possible to double their core speed (which was just as well, as they were crippled without any onboard cache).....

As above- OEM will not have a box, packaging, heatsink, retention brackets, installation booklet or anything else- its the bare naked chip in an antistatic bag. Under EU law it has a basic warranty of 1 year (regardless of whatever the retailer tells you), but this covers only manufacturing defects- if you damage the core when putting on the heatsink or manage to short the chip somehow- tough luck (this is the same for the retail). It used to be very easy to damage the cores of the AMD chips- as they were not as well protected as the Intel ones. Once your chip has "burnt in"- there is no reason it won't keep going for years on end though.......

Inspector Gadget

"...who stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free..."
(that's the right song, right?)

Retail A64's do ship with a standard heatsink and fan, whereas the tray versions don't, as other people have mentioned - the core crushing problem shouldn't be a concern with this processor, as it has an integrated heatspreader like the P4.

I seem to remember reading once that OEM parts are warranted by the supplier, whereas the retail ones are warranted by AMD? This might only apply in the US, but I thought I'd mention it in case it's relevant...

Gadget

paddy

That's fair enough Shane, but is it not true that, no manufacturer will buy a part(s) with such a short warranty? are these not the warranty given on re-conditioned products

"OEM products on the other hand are usually from 30 days to a few months by comparison. They aren't an inferior product, you are just getting a price cut by making a compromise on the guarantee of the product"

duridian

Paddy, with all due respect, you are wrong on the warranty issue.
Here for example is an article on OEM drive warranty at storagereview.com:
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/qual/warrantyCoverage.html
Even Komplett's page on OEM, retail, bulk etc. points as an example how "Intel's OEM is intended for sale to manufacturers and contains processors with a reduced guarantee period, no cooling fan, etc."
http://www.komplett.ie/k/k.asp?action=custserv&topic=defin
As Shane mentioned there have been a few rare cases where OEM products were lower spec than retail, but it is the exception rather than the norm and OEM products are usually exactly the spec as advertised. ie. If it says AMD Athlon64 3200 then that is how the CPU will perform. Its core might have originally been intended by AMD to be used as a 3500 but was not quite up to that level and was therefore sold for a 3200 instead. This is not an unusual thing in the computer industry. Here for example is a HardOCP article from nearly 5 years ago mentioning an incident of confusion involving an old model Radeon card that had lower speed ram in OEM form:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjAy

HungryJoey

Yes Paddy , you are wrong... Retail comes with a longer ( extended warrenty ) where as OEM comes with short warrenty ( if even 1 ). Also retail comes with HSF as mentioned many times above