is my CPU BURNT?

[nchrist06]

so i have an "Intel Core i7 990X @ 3.47GHz" it is not over clocked. It is actually listed as "OEM Intel i7-990X 3.4GHZ 12M EXTREME 1366" from where i bought it.

i am running a "128GB KINGSTON 2.5 IN SATA SSD MLC" , and 6x"KINGSTON HYPER-X 2 GB 1800MHZ DDR3 TRIPLE CHANNEL MEMORY MODULE"

as well as 2x"PALIT NVIDIA GTX 460 2GB PCIE DIRECX 11" GPU's in SLI.

recently my heat sink broke , 360mm water cooling kit, and i had to send it back via RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) for repair.

i was hoping to get a new CPU (heat damage), and wanted to use this site as an authority on what the CPU should be running. (2-3 months new out of the box, and not OC'd)

i tested the cold CPU in a cold room and all case fans on full blast as soon as it started up, the chip never got over 90 degrees celcius and i shut it right down. the CPU mark rating was 7,000ish. the updated avg of 163 CPU's on this site is 10,613.

are all of the tested CPU's not over clocked, and should mine be held to a higher standard because it is only 2-3months old?
should i get a new CPU based on this?



-thanks for your input in advance

[David (PassMark)]

and should mine be held to a higher standard because it is only 2-3months old

No. CPUs aren't faster when new. They don't slow down with age. Although the computer itself might slow down as you load more apps on to it.

The CPU mark of a stock i7 990x should be around 10,600.

If CPUs get cooked is is very rare that they still work enough to even boot into windows.

Rather than running your $1000 CPU without a heat sink maybe you should get a cheap $20 while waiting for the water cooling kit to come back.

There are also other causes for a low CPU score. See,
Causes and Solutions for a slow PC

[nchrist06]

Thank you for your reply,

but i'm still not sure about a couple things.

Oh, and i didn't take the broken water kit off and send it in, i had to send the whole tower, it's still in transit to the company.

i ran the test with the kit attached so there was a thermal transfer from the CPU. it was only on for a minute and i shut it off, im not using it like that.

as for the slowness, i have a clean install of XP and updated software. the only thing that might slow it down is the 32bit version not accepting 12gb of RAM... i edited the paging file size, i know that i can use 10gb of RAM with page file resources in task manager, i have yet to use all 12GBs.

i guess my questions are:

-if the CPU sustained enough damage from heat but not enough to totally kill it, would it be slower?

-Does a variation of hardware or software installed on an individual's computer effect the CPU score, if you are only running tests on the CPU with PerformanceTest?

-Should this CPU run a score close to 10,600 15years from now if it is in constant use? if not why and if yes is it heat related?

Thanks again for any replies in advance

[David (PassMark)]

If you are running Windows 32bit, then this is one of the reasons for a low score. There is no reason at all today to use 32bit on a new-ish machine.

CPUs are complex devices. They also have in built thermal controls to prevent overheating. They either turn off or under clock before overheating in general. So damage causing slowness, but leaving the CPU somehow 100% stable is in my opinion unlikely. I guess a faulty temperature sensor might do it. But this would be easy to detect.

Yes variation in the hardware installed can effect the CPU score. And some software can as well. See the post I linked to above.

CPUs run on a high speed clock (~3 billion ticks per second).
Certain things happen in a certain number of clock cycles (e.g. fetching a byte from RAM might take 5 clock cycles). This doesn't change with the age of the CPU.

The question is like asking if a digital clock runs slower after it has been in use for a few months.

What might happen is that it gets less reliable and starts to get things wrong as it gets old.
1+2 = 5
Which is fairly catastrophe for a CPU.