Earlier in the week, several tech tweeters and computer news sites reported some interesting AMD Zen 4 processors spotted in the online Geekbench results browser. Unfortunately, the processor lists were fake, he admits Chips and cheese, who revealed he was behind the prank on Thursday. The site explains that one of its authors tampered with AMD Zen 4 results using a recently published tool called PMCReader. Predictably, some processors with comical names have made the rounds in recent hours. There was even a processor named Rickroll, but now we’ve broken it, as we told you…
[GB4 CPU] Unknown CPUCPU: (6C 12T) Min/Max/Avg: 3837/4290/4235 MHz Codename: RenoirCPUID: 860F01 (AuthenticAMD) Scores, vs AMD 5800XSingle: 5234, -28.5% Multiple: 22488, -50 .7%October 28, 2022
Mr Astley’s processor will never let you down
Chips and Cheese’s PMCReader article explains that on modern AMD systems there are six CPUID strings stored in registers that can easily be edited to misrepresent the product. The new tool makes editing the contents of the registry (up to 48 characters) easy. The registers are usually set at boot time and tools like Geekbench, CPU-Z, AIDA64 and others check them to identify the processor and report it among the system information and benchmark results.
Another interesting aspect of the tool is its use in less obvious fakes. This happened earlier in the week with alleged Geekbench results for the 10-core AMD Ryzen 7 7800X CPU. As long as the fraudster has a processor with higher than required CPU resources, he can configure them to “spawn” fake lower-level CPUs. Chips and Cheese says they faked the 7800X results by changing the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. It modifies the CPUID strings of the processor using tuning tools to apply a negative PBO offset of 350 MHz and removes three CCD cores. The site claims this would “fool most people” and it sure did.
Moving away from PMCReader’s potential nefarious uses and firmly back into fun territory, techies are having fun with the PMCReader tool and the 48 characters they can edit to misrepresent a CPU name. Check out some of the screenshots that have been circulating since yesterday in the gallery below – are they real or fake?!?!
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Will the world of information leakage ever be the same with tools like PMCReader freely available? It’s hard to know right now, but those looking for early insights into what AMD likes should now be doubly careful.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cpu-renamer-rickroll-trolling-benchmarks
