forums with the whole "down vote" thing. what a 2nd grade joke. i didnt expect this site to be so petty
Sensitive little flower aren't you? The up and down vote thing is not intended specifically for threads such as this, it's more useful when some people come in with BS answers to technical questions. I don't know why, but some people like to spout totally incorrect information, most likely because they're the type of person who always wants to be right even though they don't check their fact sources. Happens a lot. So down voting answers like that actually helps others who are having the same problem and are researching a correct answer to their problem, so they don't even need to post and ask. They can just get their answer and up vote the correct answer given to reinforce the opinion that it is in fact a correct answer and a working solution.
And what is also starting to happen more is people coming along here and asking for help, while also stinking the place up with their attitude. That is most likely why you've been down voted, because the very first answer you got was totally appropriate and was
not criticising your purchasing choice. But for some arcane reason you decided to take that personally, although you did say you were "not sure" if your buying purchase was being criticised. Well if you're not sure, why not wait until you
are sure before you throw your toys out of the pram?
FWIW I agree with
@DSzymborski, the VN likely denotes Vietnam and that chip will only be brand new if it has been sat around in stock for some time. Doesn't matter if it's new or not, it's been and still is to a large degree one of the best chips Intel ever made and is still relevant now. So you
haven't bought a bad chip. Again, we get a lot of people come along here, was one the other day where a guy had paid an extortionate price for an old FX chip. A lot of people down voted his answer with the price, which enabled a lot of people to quickly reinforce the original negative response to the post with the price using the up or down vote system. The original poster then knew he had to return the chip as he was clearly being ripped off. I'm sure you'd want others to do the same for you were you to be in that situation.
It's actually very useful. Maybe a quick reboot of the attitude is needed in order to realise that the very first post in response to yours was not a criticism of your buying choices, as well as the fact that the up and down vote system is intended to actually help people and only seems to get used in this context against those whose attitude
appears questionable.
Maybe yours won't be now that you've had an explanation as to why you should be grateful for the first answer, up vote that answer and select it as the best solution.