Unlocking L3 cache on Athlon II X3!

As with the Athlon II X4 it seems that some of the Athlon II X3 processors have L3 cache:

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcon...95&pageid=6252

if AMD can afford to use more expensive chips but just disable some of the cores or cache or something like that, why don't they just sell the better chips at a cheaper price to battle with Intel a bit more?

Quoters

AMD seem to have gone doen the binning route, knowing that some of the cache memory or cores would fail they've bined failing phenonII chips to AthlonII chips but it looks like they've had a more successful production run than they thought they would, so they've had to bin down working chips to meet quoters.

Which means we get to buy cpu's that are far cheaper and have a chance of being fully working more expensive chips.
For tech junkies like us it's a great deal.

There's a big difference between an L3 cache that will work in most circumstances and an L3 cache that is guaranteed to work in all circumstances. If a chip has a very minor defect that affects one part of the architecture that can be isolated and disabled, then you don't throw that chip out, you reuse it as a lower grade product. If some of those defects turn out to be sufficiently minor that that part of the chip can be enabled and used, it comes across as good PR for AMD - they get a reputation for giving enterprising enthusiasts more for their money!

There's plenty of people out there who've unlocked bits of Athlon II / Phenom II and found them to be unstable: I think we have to assume that all down-graded chips have genuinely been identified as having manufacturing defects...

Don't forget Quoters, before a production run even starts there's often agreements with major OEM manufactors and distributers to supply x numbers of chips, they make calculated guesses at the failier rates of the production run to work out the numbers and errr on the side of caution.

If the distributer want's 10,000 x3 and 10,000 x4 and you end up makeing 12,000 x4 and 8,000 x3 then it far eaiser to bin down x4 than it is to suffor the penualty clauses for your failier to make x3 quoter and try to convince them to take an extra 2,000 of the more expensive chip.