[G4] PLAY CHESS! OWC comment re testing processor upgrades

[Glenn Peterson]

Steve,

    Very interesting regarding the chess info.  BTW, I have looked in the
preferences and can't find a way to have it play itself.  What am I missing?
Thanks.

Glenn


> From: Steve Goldstein <sng at cox.net>
> Reply-To: "A place to discuss Apple's G4 computers."
> <g4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
> Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 09:28:14 -0400
> To: Power Macintosh G4 List <G4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
> Cc: Cube List <Cube at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
> Subject: [G4] PLAY CHESS!  OWC comment re testing processor upgrades
> 
> BACKGROUND: I had reported that my OWC Mercury Extreme 1.4 GHz processor
> upgrade was the culprit that was causing my Quicksilver 2002 to go crazy on me
> (weird font substitutions, freezing), and all this learned after hunting down,
> testing, and rejecting just about all other possibilities first.  OWC was VERY
> cooperative in accepting the processor upgrade for replacement.  The
> replacement processor has worked well for several days already.
> 
> CHESS: I wrote to ask OWC Tech Support about testing the new processor,
> because, even though it seems to be working properly, Apple Hardware Test (CD
> that comes with new Macs) reported the same errors as with the defective
> processor.  Their reply was very interesting and worth sharing--PLAY CHESS:
> 
> At 12:27 PM -0500 6/30/05, hdtech at helpdesk.owc.net wrote:
>> The hardware test is not the most reliable with third party processors.  It
>> may be reporting errors though there are none.
>> 
>> The best way to test your processor is to use the application Chess, which
>> Apple includes with OS X.  If you launch the program Chess, you can set the
>> preferences to have the computer play itself.  This provides a unique set of
>> conditions on the computer.  Because Chess is so math intensive, it will push
>> the CPU to its maximum usage for a majority of the time it is playing the
>> game.  It is not very ram intensive, video intensive, and does not access the
>> hard drive.  This limits the pressure to just the processor.  We have found
>> over the past few years, that this will cause most bad processors to fail.
>> For our tests, we will have the computer play 5 to 7 games of chess in a row.
>> With a good processor installed, Chess may fail once in that group of games.
>> Usually Chess completes each game without incident.  If Chess fails 2 or more
>> times in that group of 5 to 7 games, then that is very strong evidence that
>> the processor may be defective.  Of course this is not a 100% test, !
>> but for OWC's purposes, if a processor fails the Chess test, we will replace
>> the processor.  If you find that the processor passes the Chess test, but
>> still has stability problems with other applications, that will suggest that
>> the cause of the stability problems is not a defective processor.
> 
> So far, the replacement processor passed the CHESS test without any failures.
> 
> --Steve
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