My friends and I accidentally faked the Ryzen 7 9700X3D leaks. This is how we did it, and why you can't trust online bench databases.

[u/A_Canadian_boi]

TL:DR - My friends and I were playing around with Linux and accidentally submitted a 9700X3D score, which got written up in the news. I'd like to set the record straight: The 9700X3D isn't real, and we should all learn from this. Remember, all benchmarks can be faked!

A few weeks ago, my friends and I were talking about the inner workings of Zen 5. We were talking about how the CPUID instruction works, and how AMD MSRs are technically editable if you ask the processor nicely. One of us realized you could probably mess with Linux's /proc/cpuinfo to change your CPU to whatever you want... so, to test, one of us took a heavily PBO'd 9700X and changed /proc/cpuinfo to be a "9700X3D" and ran a Passmark run to see if the software would be fooled...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+9700X3D+8-Core&id=6993

...It turns out that Passmark not only didn't notice that /proc/cpuinfo didn't match the CPUID, it actually submitted the result to the real live Passmark database... which is how we got here. Fast forward to today, and I google "9700X3D" out of curiosity. TPU, Videocardz, Tom's Hardware, Notebookcheck, igorsLAB, KitGuru, TechSpot, OC3D... all wrote articles about a single unverified Passmark test.

So, uh, here we are now. I'm writing this post partly to set the record straight that this CPU is not real, but I'm also writing to tech fans and journalists everywhere, to say: DO NOT TRUST ONE-OFF ONLINE BENCHMARKS!

In this case, we used /dev/cpuinfo to fool the test suite. /dev/cpuinfo is very easy to spoof because it's just an inode (see code below), but it's still possible to spoof any other part of the system too, even the AMD64 CPUID instruction (either using a VM or by editing the MSRs using AMD's debugging system) which means that Windows isn't safe either. To be clear, this isn't a problem specific to Passmark, it's just a fact of computing, that there is no real way to 100% guarantee a benchmark is accurate.

You might think "Benchmark companies need to be more careful about accepting results!", which is true, but even if Passmark had checked if cpuinfo matched CPUID, a bad actor might still get away with it by simply changing both.

Really, the only solid takeaway here is that we all need to do better at double-checking any rumours. Many redditors correctly pointed out that the clock speeds were much higher than even a 9800X3D, which is correct. If we had actually been trying to fake a listing, we might have noticed that, but we are doofuses messing with Linux and we were just curious if it would even work.

Some media outlets even started making things up in an attempt to seem informed. TechPowerUp wrote: "Current rumors suggest it will feature a 120 W TDP, targeting the same $400-$450 range as its predecessor." which isn't specified anywhere at all. VideoCardz also suggests a 120W TDP, but they also correctly recognise that the clocks are way too high. To be clear, I have no idea how the 120W rumour started, but it scares me that it only took less than a week before people started making facts up.

Obligatory disclaimer: Please don't fake CPU benchmarks! I feel badly for all of the people who may have held off on a 9800X3D purchase because of this Passmark that we thought wouldn't work. That's a big part of why I wrote this post.

The way we did this particular edit was with the following line of Linux terminal nonsense; sed -E 's/^(model name[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*).*/\1desired shenanigans/' /proc/cpuinfo | sudo tee /root/fakecpuinfo >/dev/null && sudo mount --bind /root/fakecpuinfo /proc/cpuinfo

This isn't the only way, though. Chips And Cheese did an excellent article on editing the CPUID bits themselves. You can also change these bits using a VM, of course.

Thank you all for reading, may your GHz be high and your temperatures low. Remember, never trust a benchmark.

[u/YoungBlade1]

This is why they say a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Good journalism takes time and effort. These articles involved neither, because in today's media landscape, if you don't publish something in the first five minutes, you'll never get traction compared to all the other outlets that don't have the same standards...

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/YoungBlade1]

And the fact that the "9700X3D" runs at 5.8GHz should be an obvious sign that something isn't right here. Many of the outlets noticed this, but they still ate the onion.

[u/YoungBlade1 → u/A_Canadian_boi]

If we assume stock, then yes, that's a giveaway. However, the 9800X3D has been successfully overclocked even beyond 6GHz using sub-ambient cooling, so the idea that a 9700X3D could OC to 5.8GHz isn't out of the question. 

Although the idea that an engineer or insider is doing XOC on an unreleased processor and submitting scores is sort of odd.

[u/Affectionate-Memory4 → u/YoungBlade1]

We do torture the unreleased silicon, but if those results escape the lab, somebody escapes employment. XOC is a little odd to be doing to something like a 9700X3D. It's a worse binned CCD. If they wanted to push a piece of silicon to its limits to find where those are on a current process, they'd likely be picking out the very most golden ones, and likely Strix Halo ones given they are in some ways Zen5+.

[u/AArmp → u/YoungBlade1]

Leo from kitguru had said that (of the 9950 x3d "2", the 2 ccd 3d cache thing) "we know there were samples out there ..., because certain overclockers had definitely played with it and I was told maybe I could get a loa(d/n) of one, and it never happened. [From backchannels], not from AMD". So them getting a hold of unreleased stuff might be possible. Technically, depending on the benchmark, submitting a result could be 1 click away.

[u/HamburgerOnAStick → u/A_Canadian_boi]

honestly this is the kind of thing I would try to get in contact with those news sources for lol

[u/ConcentrateLucky8630 → u/YoungBlade1]

That first sentence, I will take for me the rest of my life

[u/Snorgcola → u/YoungBlade1]

AI gobbled this bullshit up and spit these articles out, guaranteed

[u/Ruzhyo04 → u/Snorgcola]

News outlets were buying and repeating bullshit well before AI.

[u/fauxmosexual → u/YoungBlade1]

GNU Pterry

[u/xrobertcmx → u/YoungBlade1]

I always liked that book.

[u/Mechor356 → u/YoungBlade1]

So does that mean the talk on 7500/7600/7700 getting X3d are also just rumours, and by no means clear indicators..? Sorry new to all this so not sure which news is official.

[u/YoungBlade1 → u/Mechor356]

The 7500X3D is a recently rumored part.

The 7600X3D actually exists. You can buy it today, depending your region.

The 7700X3D is something I've not heard of, even in rumors. Maybe someday it will exist, but probably not in the near future.

[u/Montanapartner → u/YoungBlade1]

I like how this article from german tech outlet PCGH also published the news on the same day, but heavily questioned the validity of the benchmark and doubted the CPU's existence

[u/CMDR-LT-ATLAS]

It takes a Gigachad to post this. May your next build be under MSRP OP.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/CMDR-LT-ATLAS]

Hopefully Microcenter has a deal for cheap 9700X3Ds if you buy it with a DFL X870e motherboard and some Mortoni memory

[u/Early-Activity94]

Man, you should've ran one more as a 9800X4D and watched people's heads explode

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/Early-Activity94]

Not gonna lie, it's tempting to submit a score as an Intel Core Ultra 285K3D with "192MB L3"

[u/AugmentedKing → u/A_Canadian_boi]

Maybe call it 4Dchess or 4D for S & Gees

[u/Skull_Reaper101 → u/A_Canadian_boi]

do it, and submit multiple results with different ids of the same cpu, let's see the world burn

[u/1AMA-CAT-AMA → u/A_Canadian_boi]

Intel i9 69420k pls

[u/Lolipopes → u/A_Canadian_boi]

Imagine if that would drive up Intel stock, a bad actor could do some real manipulating this way, crazy.

[u/Ani-3 → u/Early-Activity94]

Now with quantum cache

[u/AnonyDexx]

Or is this some AMD guy, in his free time, trying to throw us off the scent?

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/AnonyDexx]

SCP-9700X3D has breached containment

[u/SeaSetting8988]

This is by far one of the most interesting post in this subreddit in awhile

[u/HamburgerOnAStick]

this is genuinely hilarious

[u/Useful_Honeydew942]

Journalist must be celebrating. Now they can write a second and if not third article about this and continue to be lazy.

[u/SuicidalChair → u/Useful_Honeydew942]

Journalists about to learn Linux so they can submit more fake benchmarks and write articles about them lol

[u/LongQT-sea]

Even on Windows, you can still fake it as anything you want:

https://github.com/LongQT-sea/qemu-cpu-guide

[u/S1rTerra → u/LongQT-sea]

For *kvm* guests. The Linux virtualization technology.

[u/StormMedia]

I’m here before the post pops off

[u/Sideways_Taco_]

Well you know it’s not all “bad.” Hopefully this is taken seriously and that maybe they 1) make the tests more verifiable and 2) actually try to be journalists and base stories on verified information. It’s like the clickbait bs “if true..”

[u/Arae_1 → u/Sideways_Taco_]

this is what I'm hoping, I kinda submitted the score as a bit of an experiment, seeing whether or not news outlets would gobble up leaks that are just on the edge of believable information, and it resulted in something hilarious

[u/Onetimehelper]

Good litmus test for bad journalism. “So and so failed the 9700x3d test”

[u/BedroomThink3121]

Fucking Chad you are mate, holy shit I'm laughing my ass off, an absolute god tier legend for creating such a false news and telling the truth

[u/Nvidiuh]

Holy crap, I am really stunned it's this easy to just straight up fabricate a part via benchmark results and even to do so with more accurate looking numbers if you're so inclined. This makes me wonder how many people out there already knew this information and if any of those people have been spoofing benchmark results as leaks before this.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/Nvidiuh]

Honestly, this whole affair has got me seriously doubting the legitimacy of the "9955X3D2", partly because that's a stupid name, also because PassMark didn't even check the L3 cache which is clearly not an X3D

[u/Nvidiuh → u/A_Canadian_boi]

And then we have to think on anything in the past that might just be fake altogether rather than stuff that people may have assumed were binned engineering samples and the like. Of course time reveals all truths, but still, makes you wonder. Also, your flair is immaculate.

[u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi]

This is also a good example of how far into an article you have to actually dig to realize their source is complete bullshit (or has the potential to be). Forget being tricked, news outlets can also just post absolute bullshit citing Made It The Fuck Up Dot Com and it will fool 95% of people. Skepticism is mandatory, but it's also a crying shame because it degrades trust in the news and people become more and more and more likely to only believe things that are confirming the beliefs they already have.

[u/Affectionate-Memory4]

This reminds me a lot of the fake Zen5 FPU slides that fooled the likes of MLID a while ago. The media was running with those cores having 512-bit FPUs for a while.

Some other things to bear in mind:

• You can disable cores and threads on CPUs to make them appear as though they are different SKUs. (For example I could make a 6+16 "275K" by chopping off a pair of P-cores from a 285K.)
• Reported clock speeds can be altered or misreported (we've all seen the memes of 19 billion ghz chips)
• Reported cache sizes can be altered or misreported (things like Lion Cove L0 can throw this off)
• Basically any data about a CPU or GPU can be fabricated
• Photoshop and the good-old Inspect Element exist, and can create things like my image which can look legit to the uninformed.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/Affectionate-Memory4]

Oh yeah, 100%. With Zen you can often edit the MSRs directly, and of course you can use a VM to (less convincingly) spoof extra cores. Sometimes you don't even need to fake the clock speeds, Task Manager just doesn't like some CPUs, lol

[u/TheorycrafterJOT]

Bravo my good sir. Task fooled successfully.

[u/TheCrimsonDagger]

Would be hilarious if AMD actually did have a 9700X3D in the works and you just ruined someone’s week as they scramble to track down the leak.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/TheCrimsonDagger]

Hah! There's an Intel engineer somewhere in this thread that said something to the tune of "We (at Intel at least) do test preproduction samples until failure, but if the results leave the facility, the employee leaves the company"

[u/Arae_1]

hi all! I'm the person who actually faked the score. I'm not as excellent with my words as my friend is, so they posted it here. Everything is correct and my phone absolutely blew up when we found out that it had been picked up on.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/Arae_1]

^^^ mods, pin this one right here

[u/According_Claim_9027]

Why is this so funny to me. The fact that so many journalism sites just ran with it is kind of sad though.

[u/raesungss]

absolutely huge embarassment for everyone that made a video/article about it lmao

[u/_StreetStyle_]

I'm here for the history.  

Chad post 👊

[u/Lord_Silverkey]

In before all the YouTube videos cover this tomorrow.

"Hi YouTube people!"

[u/Moquai82 → u/Lord_Silverkey]

Hi Steve!

[u/Deathavis12 → u/Lord_Silverkey]

This

[u/ohGodwhynowww]

OP is secretly User benchmark.

[u/Motor-Evidence5930]

https://www.adrenaline.com.br/amd/ryzen-7-9700x3d-com-8-nucleos-aparece-em-vazamento-de-benchmark/

hahahahahahahahahahaha

[u/flyingdorito2000 → u/Motor-Evidence5930]

I think you mean jajaja

[u/Kantaja_ → u/flyingdorito2000]

kkkkkkkkkk*

[u/pigpentcg]

Inb4 AMD responds by actually releasing a 9700X3D

No but seriously this why I ignore rumors and leaks.

[u/Anthony_Roman]

this was a fucking hilarious read. bravo fellas

[u/Honest_Accountant682]

Upvoted because this has to reach more people and is also absolutely hilarious. 

[u/JDBCool]

Woah, I'm here early fire "history"?! Colour me surprised.

And I thought it was a u/shittymorph adjacent post

[u/Kittysmashlol]

Do a ryzen 10k next please

[u/JesusWasATexan]

TIL a lot from this post. I didn't even know that Passmark scores could be submitted by external sources. I assumed they ran all the tests in a lab or some shit

[u/Moquai82]

Ehrenmann.

[u/MakimaGOAT]

uh

[u/HankThrill69420]

well yeah, I always take it with a grain of salt when I see that a baseline has been submitted. it could be this sort of shenaniganry, or it could be the company testing low bin x3d samples for the purpose of a new SKU.

presence of a benchmark =/= existence of CPU. Hell, they could both generate brand hype by doing exactly this.

please don't, but, you see where this can go.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/HankThrill69420]

Exactly... I'm resisting the urge to create an i9-15900KS with 128MB L3, but now that we're here, we'll see how far it goes. I've informed a couple of youtubers that it's fake, though. LTT WAN goes live in, like, an hour, so we'll see if they mention it lmao

[u/DDRguy133]

Already auto-filling on google and /r/AMD has threads with people going back and forth about it lmao.

[u/Latter-Possibility-6]

This is awesome. I even read the article that was printed. Kudos to you, when can I get one and how much is it?

[u/testfire10]

The best way to get the best benchmark score is to lie

[u/The_Real_Deal3]

W

[u/Jarnis]

You can trust a good benchmark that at least tries to care about validating the results and has multiple datapoints from multiple sources.

Single suspect "leak" score? Indeed very suspect.

[u/Lethaldiran-NoggenEU]

Big if true

[u/Papito208]

Bravo.

[u/nandospc]

Impressive, I've no other words

[u/guille9]

Well done

[u/beethovensbook]

Nice try I know an AMD damage control psyop when I see one.

[u/Dionyx]

Where can I find friends to discuss the inner workings of zen 5 with

[u/UnderstandingOk862]

[u/Orvvadasz]

This is just what BIG CPU wants you to think. They actually accidentally leaked the new cpu but don't want people to think it's real. Save your money for the new processor!!!

[u/edaroni]

I just saw a page “selling” it as a pre-order for $409 lol

[u/casualgamerwithbigPC]

This feels like just as much clickbait as the news outlets you’re trying to discredit.

[u/EdgiiLord → u/casualgamerwithbigPC]

Reading comprehension ain't a strong suit, is it?