Some Ryzen 5 1600/X Buyers Have Found Their 6-Core CPU Has 8 Cores

Megalith

Megalith

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Some folks who've bought Ryzen 5 1600 or 1600X processors have found that their chips have two more cores than expected, which can only be described as a massive win on the CPU lottery: these CPUs should have six cores and 12 threads, but reports on a Korean forum say some users have found they have eight cores (and 16 threads) out of the box.

Why exactly this is happening is unclear. Each CPU is tested right before it’s packaged to be shipped, so it’s implausible for the manufacturing facility not to have known that those 1600s and 1600Xs they were shipping weren’t 1800Xs. It’s possible that this was a decision made simply as the result of higher demand on Ryzen 5 1600X and 1600 CPUs leading AMD to use some of its less purchased 8-core dies as Ryzen 5 1600Xs and 1600s to meet the demand. One thing is for certain though, this gives a whole new meaning to the phrase silicon lottery.
 
Most likely it's a packaging blunder: someone put a bunch of boxes for the 1600s in the 1800 packager.
 
8 cores, as in out of the box? I mean, it only makes sense that Ryzen 5's would actually be 7 inside but just have some cores disabled because they were not good enough or maybe even faulty but could still be sold as lesser core models. Someone forgot to disable them at the factory?
 
Hmmm, reminds me of the old athlon/phenom II's that could be core unlocked once motherboard makers figured that out. I have several relatives running X3's as four cores for budget home use builds.
 
With the way AMD does things, this might be a case where cores that were supposed to be disabled weren't. This might lead to unstable CPUs, as the cores might not be stable enough to run at full speed. Ryzen cores are heavily binned, as I have found out first hand with my 1700X, and these CPUs might not be a win as far as the silicon lottery goes.
 
MaZa said:
8 cores, as in out of the box? I mean, it only makes sense that Ryzen 5's would actually be 7 inside but just have some cores disabled because they were not good enough or maybe even faulty but could still be sold as lesser core models. Someone forgot to disable them at the factory?
Click to expand...

That is what they are. AMD designed Ryzen this way all of the Ryzen/TR/EYPC CPUs are the same exact silicon they just disabled CCX units to create different core counts or in the case of TR/EYPC they add dies and thus far its been shown the two "dummy" dies on Threadripper are in fact real silicon.
 
So either the yields are so high on Ryzen that they don't have enough subpar CPUs to meet R5 production levels, so they're having to send the "worst" of the 1700s down to the R5 line

or...

non-1700 R7 CPUs are selling like ass, so they're flogging glutted channels down to the channels that are actually moving?


I'm leaning towards the second, but I may just be too jaded.
 
This is a solid win for AMD if this is on purpose; "we had better yields than we thought, so you get a Cookie!" is so much better than "We used a laser so we know how screwed you are."

I would love a 12-core unlocked xeon processor for my socket 2011 system, but that's not available.


I just bought a x5670 for my x58 chipset mobo; there were no 6 cores for those unless you had major dollars back in the day, not that the i7-920s didn't overclock to 4.2 easy... they just weren't 6 cores.
I've heard this will give my main system a run for the money, and handle 96GB of memory, to the 920's 24GB, which is not really usable without server.
 
The extra cores being present is no surprise to me.

Not needing to do anything to use the cores, mild to moderate surprise.

I remember getting a new AMD CPU at a show, at the same booth were many, many, free mechanical pencils to go with the new cpu for free.

Oddest thing in the world drawing a line with a pencil to upgrade your new cpu.
 
So Sunday when the 1600x went on sale I ordered one.... and I've been hyped ever since.
This news only made my anticipation worse.

Should be arriving in the next couple of days.
Although my AM4 bracket is probably gonna arrive long after. Coming from the Cooler Master store in Europe via whatever shipper is their cheapest, so I'll get to enjoy my anticipation just a bit longer.

Of course I only expect a 6 core but somebody has to win the lottery.....
 
mbelue said:
So Sunday when the 1600x went on sale I ordered one.... and I've been hyped ever since.
This news only made my anticipation worse.

Should be arriving in the next couple of days.
Although my AM4 bracket is probably gonna arrive long after. Coming from the Cooler Master store in Europe via whatever shipper is their cheapest, so I'll get to enjoy my anticipation just a bit longer.

Of course I only expect a 6 core but somebody has to win the lottery.....
Click to expand...

Let us know!
 
wondering if this is a cpu thing or if theyre using a common bios....
 
Yeah, this is actually pretty bad - if true it speaks to a situation of horrible Quality Assurance. Sure, everyone likes getting free cores (I would too, as much as the next guy) but as has been mentioned above, why are those extra cores enabled? Were the chips binned, found faulty, but the extra cores weren't disabled before packaging? That's bad QA. Are they actually 1700s and mislabeled at the factory? That's bad QA.
If it wasn't a mistake - if someone at the packaging plant had dies where all cores were good and decided to leave them all enabled when assembling the package - that's terrible lack of management oversight over the assembly process. If I was a system integrator and ended up with a mixed batch of processors I'd be pissed, you can't have customers complaining because some people got more cores than they did, or have systems misbehaving b/c the TDP is outside of design limits.
I really hope for AMDs sake that this is b.s. or a problem at a very small scale.
 
TrailRunner said:
Yeah, this is actually pretty bad - if true it speaks to a situation of horrible Quality Assurance. Sure, everyone likes getting free cores (I would too, as much as the next guy) but as has been mentioned above, why are those extra cores enabled? Were the chips binned, found faulty, but the extra cores weren't disabled before packaging? That's bad QA. Are they actually 1700s and mislabeled at the factory? That's bad QA.
If it wasn't a mistake - if someone at the packaging plant had dies where all cores were good and decided to leave them all enabled when assembling the package - that's terrible lack of management oversight over the assembly process. If I was a system integrator and ended up with a mixed batch of processors I'd be pissed, you can't have customers complaining because some people got more cores than they did, or have systems misbehaving b/c the TDP is outside of design limits.
I really hope for AMDs sake that this is b.s. or a problem at a very small scale.
Click to expand...
There's one more possibility, that management sent down this directive on purpose, i.e. Surprise and Delight. It's a great way to build hype and get yourself in the news cycle, in a positive light.
 
TrailRunner said:
Yeah, this is actually pretty bad - if true it speaks to a situation of horrible Quality Assurance. Sure, everyone likes getting free cores (I would too, as much as the next guy) but as has been mentioned above, why are those extra cores enabled? Were the chips binned, found faulty, but the extra cores weren't disabled before packaging? That's bad QA. Are they actually 1700s and mislabeled at the factory? That's bad QA.
If it wasn't a mistake - if someone at the packaging plant had dies where all cores were good and decided to leave them all enabled when assembling the package - that's terrible lack of management oversight over the assembly process. If I was a system integrator and ended up with a mixed batch of processors I'd be pissed, you can't have customers complaining because some people got more cores than they did, or have systems misbehaving b/c the TDP is outside of design limits.
I really hope for AMDs sake that this is b.s. or a problem at a very small scale.
Click to expand...

Fortunately, the TDP of Ryzen 5 1xxx and Ryzen 7 1700 is identical (y).

Assuming they weren't intended to be 1700X, 1800, or 1800Xs :whistle:.
 
Emission said:
Fortunately, the TDP of Ryzen 5 1xxx and Ryzen 7 1700 is identical (y).

Assuming they weren't intended to be 1700X, 1800, or 1800Xs :whistle:.
Click to expand...

but theyre running 3.6/4.0ghz. Those are 1800x speeds, so assume 1800x tdp.
 
I remember flashing my 6950s to 6970s.. Any word on which batches are effected......not for any particular reason ;)
 
mnewxcv said:
but theyre running 3.6/4.0ghz. Those are 1800x speeds, so assume 1800x tdp.
Click to expand...

I messed up, the 1600X reports those speeds but it actually has a 95W TDP. The 1600 non-X has a 65W TDP which is where I made the assumption that the 1600X had the same TDP.
 
I tried to find one, looked at over 100 1600s between two stores. Highest I got to was 1731
 
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