Some Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 are again equipped with two CCDs

AMD has so far differentiated between chips with one CCD like the Ryzen 5 5600X or Ryzen 7 5800X and those with two CCDs like the Ryzen 9 5900X or Ryzen 9 5950X in its Zen 3 processors. One CCD could offer a maximum of eight cores if had no errors. Already in this generation, however, there were isolated reports that buyers of chips with six or eight cores had received a model with two CCDs that could not be sold as Ryzen 9 due to not meeting the limits.

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Now the same thing is happening again with the current generation Zen 4. In one of his videos, overclocker and Youtuber Roman “der8auer” Hartung decapitated a Ryzen 5 7600X. In theory, this chip should only be equipped with a Raphael CCD, of which six cores are active. This makes it the smallest Zen 4 stage featured so far. However, a second CCD was installed on the 8auers sample, but it seems to have no function.

Beneath the thermal imager, only one CCD emits a heat signature, indicating that it is working. This, in turn, begs the question why two CCDs were installed in this Ryzen 5 7600X. There are several possible explanations for this. The first would be the AM5 chips’ idiosyncratic heat sink. The second CCD could be for structural support, but since models with a CCD have already been seen, this is not possible.

The second, and more likely, assumption is that AMD has slightly misjudged demand and manufacturing quality. TSMC’s new manufacturing process could perform better than expected and produce less waste, while at the same time fewer PC gamers than expected are buying the larger Ryzen 9 models and therefore demanding smaller chips. . As a result, you need to quickly re-label a processor intended for Ryzen 9 and disable the cores accordingly.

Font: der8auer