OuTpaTienT
01-24-2000, 03:48 PM
Here is a quote via a usenet post from Dean Kent, a former chip vendor and writer on tech issues. He was attempting to put the still meager information in some kind of perspective:
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It might be construed that any reseller who offers AMD products as an 'official' AMD reseller must comply with certain terms - one of which might be that AMD products cannot be modified or altered in any way. This does not mean that selling of additional devices that assist in overclocking would necessarily be affected.
In fact, I see the announcement by ComputerNerd to be somewhat sensationalist (and completely non-professional). There is no indication that AMD will even try to stop anyone from making or any 'Golden Fingers' devices, particularly since they are not manufactured by AMD.
It is one thing to provide information about how to overclock an Athlon, and quite another to actually do the work and sell it as an 'AMD Athlon processor'. What ComputerNerd and other should have done is to try and work with AMD to get authorization - just as Kryotech did. As a matter of fact, it is entirely possible that the contract between Kryotech and AMD requires such action if the reseller has *not* received authorization from AMD to sell an overclocked processor.
What consumers may not know is that a manufacturer can (and sometimes will) prohibit sales of their products to any reseller who violates certain terms. They do this by notifying their authorized distributors. This means that the reseller can only purchase 'gray market' product, with no warranty from AMD. At that point, the reseller may likely be able to do whatever he/she wants to.
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Computernerd, which seems to be the source of most of this backlash, was advertising "factory modified" Athlons, what ever those are, and seems to be trying to turn the episode into free publicity for their business. There have been no lawsuits. A couple of sites that were buying Athlons, cracking them open and resoldering them and reselling them at a higher clock speed have been asked to stop or face unspecified consequences.
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It might be construed that any reseller who offers AMD products as an 'official' AMD reseller must comply with certain terms - one of which might be that AMD products cannot be modified or altered in any way. This does not mean that selling of additional devices that assist in overclocking would necessarily be affected.
In fact, I see the announcement by ComputerNerd to be somewhat sensationalist (and completely non-professional). There is no indication that AMD will even try to stop anyone from making or any 'Golden Fingers' devices, particularly since they are not manufactured by AMD.
It is one thing to provide information about how to overclock an Athlon, and quite another to actually do the work and sell it as an 'AMD Athlon processor'. What ComputerNerd and other should have done is to try and work with AMD to get authorization - just as Kryotech did. As a matter of fact, it is entirely possible that the contract between Kryotech and AMD requires such action if the reseller has *not* received authorization from AMD to sell an overclocked processor.
What consumers may not know is that a manufacturer can (and sometimes will) prohibit sales of their products to any reseller who violates certain terms. They do this by notifying their authorized distributors. This means that the reseller can only purchase 'gray market' product, with no warranty from AMD. At that point, the reseller may likely be able to do whatever he/she wants to.
----
Computernerd, which seems to be the source of most of this backlash, was advertising "factory modified" Athlons, what ever those are, and seems to be trying to turn the episode into free publicity for their business. There have been no lawsuits. A couple of sites that were buying Athlons, cracking them open and resoldering them and reselling them at a higher clock speed have been asked to stop or face unspecified consequences.