AMD Ryzen 5 core allocation revealed, disabled in symmetrical pairs

AMD revealed details about what's going on under the hood of its Ryzen 5 processors. As you may know, the current quad-core, six-core and eight-core Ryzen processors are all based on the same die. The eight-core models are the full versions of the chip whereas the other models are made by disabling cores.

Now Legit Reviews has a bit more details and it seems AMD will disable cores in symmetrical pairs. So you will always have two CPU complex (CCX) blocks with a symmetrical number of activated cores, meaning 2:2, 3:3 or 4:4 configurations. AMD will not ship Ryzen processors with 4:0 or 0:4 configurations.

Here's how the Ryzen lineup looks like, with the three Ryzen 7 CPUs already on the market and the Ryzen 5 CPUs to follow on April 11:

Ryzen 7 1800X: 8 cores (4+4), 16 threads, 16MB L3, 4MB L2, 3.6GHz to 4GHz, $499

Ryzen 7 1700X: 8 cores (4+4), 16 threads, 16MB L3, 4MB L2, 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz, $399

Ryzen 7 1700: 8 cores (4+4), 16 threads, 16MB L3, 4MB L2, 3GHz to 3.7GHz, $329

Ryzen 5 1600X: 6 cores (3+3), 12 threads, 16MB L3, 3MB L2, 3.6GHz to 4GHz, $249

Ryzen 5 1600: 6 cores (3+3), 12 threads, 16MB L3, 3MB L2, 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz, $219

Ryzen 5 1500X: 4 cores (2+2), 8 threads, 16MB L3, 2MB L2, 3.5GHz to 3.7GHz, $189

Ryzen 5 1400: 4 cores (2+2), 8 threads, 8MB L3 (split 4MB per CCX), 2MB L2, 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz, $169

Because Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 share the same die, one question that pops up is whether it will be possible to reactivate the disabled cores. At the moment, we have no idea.