Taiwanese Fake AMD CPUs

Industrious, aren’t they?

Taiwanese officials shut down late last week a Taipei workshop reportedly making counterfeit AMD chips. The news has put a damper on the release of Alchemy, the company’s new processor.

Reports published by area news Web site Sin Chew Daily said one man had been arrested after investigators found the warehouse illegally re-labeling as many as one million chips as AMD Athlon XP microprocessors.

The practice, as “re-marking,” involves resellers and/or distributors who may purchase less expensive processors that are rated at lower clock frequencies and then re-mark them at higher clock frequencies for resale.

Tech industry site X-bit labs reported Saturday many of the fakes were headed for South Asian markets but some of the SKUs may have landed in Germany. Representatives with AMD were not immediately available for comment. [/quote]

internetnews.com/ent-news/ar … hp/3453541

The Intel CPUs here are always sold in the big box with all the labels and holographic stickers and everything. I’ve always wondered why they don’t do the same with AMD CPUs. Also there are programs that can ask the chip exactly what kind/speed it is, even if it is overclocked. Anything like that for AMD?

Those chips are not fake AMD chips. They are overclocked AMD chips that they repackage as the higher clocked chips. AMD has programs on their site to tell you the id and real speed of the chips.