Athlon and Duron with red cores! Check it out!

[Kracker]

I work for a parts supplier, so I see no less than 500-600 Duron and Athlons on my tech bench every month. I know all about the core colors and the fab process. The green cores feature aluminum, fabbed in Austin, and are green because of the way it is polished. The blue cores feature copper, and of course are blue because of the different polishing technique in Dresden.

The codes on the processor contain info about max fsb, size of l2 cache, case temp., operating voltage, package type, speed, & family architecture.

The other day I was testing a few Durons and Athlons, and two of them featured red cores. Yes, red. I even had a few of my associates have a peek at it and they agree that the Duron and Athlon had red cores. Not green, not even slightly bluish. No, they were both red.

Has anyone else out there seen a Duron or Athlon with a red core? I would really like to know where they come from. I am thinking that they come from Austin, because one of the red cores were on a Duron, and those are only fabbed in Austin. Does anyone know if the code on the CPU feature where they were fabbed?

Im expecting a digital camera in by next week, so if they are not sold then I will take a snapshot of them and post them here.

 

[DaddyG]

Kracker, havn't seen Red but I have seen Purple. Its all about the polishing process, not sure if this is done in-house by AMD or they job it outside.

 

[k2lme]

I read something the other day about red cores.
I think it said they were remarked in the Far East and
not AMD original issue.

 

[jinsonxu]

There's a rumour that the red cores are caused by some unscrupulous techniques where the chips undergo high temperatures and the core becomes reddish so they can market it as copper interconnect.

I've my doubts about the rumour though. Anyone have more info?

 

[mangust]

For multicolored Durons check this article out:
http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?ArticleID=386

While it does not discuss the red cores, it is still a good read.

 

[Blayze]

hmmm.... interesting

let us know when you get some pics up on the red cores.