Thermal Diode = Finally Thermal Protection?
It might only look like an eensy weensy little feature, but it could have been of crucial importance to the many of us who unwillingly fried their Athlon/Duron processors due to failing heat sink fans or badly attached heat sinks. Athlon 4 is finally equipped with a thermal diode!!!!
The pins for THERMDA (anode) and THERMDC (cathode) are S7 and U7. According to the above specs the motherboard can read the actual core temperature and apply appropriate measures to safe the life of the CPU (or avoid a notebook meltdown). What I am missing however is the automatic shut down of the Athlon 4 at a certain temperature, without any external electronics. Intel processors simply don't operate when they are too hot, regardless if the motherboard cares about it or no.