A Specific Batch Of AMD Ryzen 5 Six-Core Chips Shipped With Eight Cores Active

Whenever we see one product that’s scaled down from another, it’s always fun to wonder if it’d be possible to unlock extra capability, and in effect, increase the value. Overclocking could help increase the value, but that’d still pale in comparison to being able to add two additional cores to a CPU, for example. Some have no doubt wondered, then, whether AMD’s Ryzen 5 six-cores could possibly be unlocked to become an eight-core…

… and, well, the answer that question is effectively, “no”. However, to the surprise of some, it appears some Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X six-core processors have been shipping with eight cores active, although if you have one of these models already, you should probably know up front that there’s an overwhelming chance that you don’t have a lucky chip. Cue sad whomp whomp music.

The shot above shows the Ryzen 5 1600X represented correctly as a “Six-Core” processor, but the number of threads in Task Manager tell a different story. If you’re lucky enough to score one of these chips, know that the only thing you gain is the cores; no extra cache is unlocked in the process. The clocks also remain unchanged.

TechPowerUp is reporting that as it seems right now, these unique chips were produced in between Sept 4 and 10 in Malaysia, and probably highlight a quality control issue – one that just happens to benefit the customer. Because of the rarity of these chips, and the fact that nothing is technically broken, it doesn’t seem likely that AMD will even spend time commenting on it.

Now the question has to be begged: will these chips become valuable simply based on their rarity? Do you suppose that there will ever be CPU collectors like there are coin collectors?