Lucky AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Buyers Surprisingly Are Discovering 8 Cores, 16 Threads On Chips
However, folks that have received the latest batch of the two chips are finding out that they are not in possession of hexa-core processors. Instead, they're finding that the processors have 8 cores and 16 threads. In the case of the Ryzen 5 1600X, enthusiasts have discovered that the base and turbo clocks are 3.6GHz and 4GHz respectively, as expected. However, booting into Windows confirms the 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads.
Likewise, the mutated Ryzen 5 1600 chips retain their base and turbo clocks of 3.2GHz and 3.6GHz respectively.
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 with 8 cores and 16 threads
With a full 8 cores and 16 threads on tap, the oddball Ryzen 5 1600X processors were found to perform exactly like the much more expensive Ryzen 7 1800X. Given the $180 price difference between the two, this is a major coup for the lucky customers that were able to secure these processors.
According to WCCFtech, both the Ryzen 5 1600 and Ryzen 5 1600X processors in question were manufactured in Malaysia on the 36th week of 2017. In order to decipher the batch code on your particular Ryzen processor, you can use the following guide sourced from reddit.
We don't know what exactly caused AMD to relabel Ryzen 7 1800X processors as lesser parts (while keeping all functioning cores intact), but we wouldn't recommend making a run on Ryzen 5 1600 and Ryzen 5 1600X processors at the moment. This could have been a temporary move by AMD to meet a temporary spike in demand for its Ryzen 5 processors. So, it's quite possible that Week 37 and later processors could return back to normalcy.
