Why did socket 423 fail

I know socket 423 sucked, in benchies and everything but on paper they seem ok ? .. they used ram that runs at 800mhz which is faster than most of what is out right now, 400fsb which seems decent for the time.. what was so bad about this package ?

It wasn't the socket, it was the processor. The Willamette was built on the old 180 nm core and was just a stop gap measure to compete in the MHz race with AMD until they could release the Northwood 130 nm core with new architecture.

Also the design was optimised for a lot more cache than intel could afford to sell it with. I think it was intended to have 2Mb. So it got castrated in that department, which of course affected the virility of the whole animal. I think it was the 3rd time in a row they trotted a CPU out with less cache than it's design was intended for, happened with the PII and PIII as well, only it didn't hurt those quite so bad.... you can just see it in some types of apps though when you put a P-MMX-233 against a PII-233.

i see