A number of Korean PC users have reported that the AMD Ryzen 5 1600X and 1600 CPUs they recently purchased run on all 8-cores straight from the box. According to these users, upon installing the processor, they discovered that all 8-cores and 16-threads are read by the system.
Initially released back on April 11, 2017, the two AMD Ryzen 5 processors based on Zen microarchitecture were designed to target the mainstream market with its 6-cores, 12-thread process. The 1600X has a market value of $249 at launch while 1600 is sold at $219.
The power of Ryzen 7
Accordingly, the 1600X processor offers the same base clock rate of 3.6GHz with a boost speed of 4.0GHz (4.1GHz extended frequency) as that of Ryzen 7 1800X. With all 8-cores running, this Ryzen 5 processor pretty much looks identical as the high-end Ryzen 7 processor which is sold for $499, twice the price of the Ryzen 5 1600X.
The same goes with the 1600 processor: 3.2GHz base clock reaching 3.6GHz on boost (3.7GHz extended frequency). This performance is comparable to that of AMD Ryzen 7 1700 which was sold at $329 at launch.
Factory mistake
The information about the AMD Ryzen 5 1600X having the power of an 8-core processor was shared on Korean forum CoolN.kr by these PC users who have purchased it.
As suggested by some, it could have been a naming mistake for a specific production lot. As such, there could be at least one batch of these supposedly high-end Ryzen 7 1800X that turned out to be Ryzen 5 1600X somewhere in the market.
While there were screenshots of Ryzen 5 1600X that shows running on 8-cores, there was no picture of the box or the physical processor itself.
By looking at the batch code written on top of the CPU, we can easily identify the location where the processor was produced and assembled.
As posted by Reddit.com user rigred who listed the breakdown of the AMD CPU batch code, the first four numbers suggest the year and week the CPU were produced. The next two letters represent the first and last letter of the assembly (ATMP) location (SP for Penang, Malaysia / SU for Suzhou, China) while the last letter represents the wafer production location (S for Saratoga / T for Texas).
Most popular CPU
According to a report from Market Realist, AMD sales started to increase with the arrival of Ryzen processors. Based on the sales data of German retailer Mindfactory, Intel remains in control of total CPUs sold back in March 2017 with 72.4 percent market share and only 27.6 percent for AMD.
AMD’s share rose to 36.5 percent following the release of Ryzen 7. AMD market share continued to increase over the next months after the release of the entry-level and mainstream AMD Ryzen CPUs, getting 36.5 percent in April, 47.6 percent in June and 48.7 percent in July. According to their data, Ryzen 5 1600 was the most popular AMD processor based on sales figures since April.
