this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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If you're building systems, I would assume you're the kind of person that knows how they work.
The system tells you what CPU it has on boot.
The BIOS tells you what CPU you have.
MemTest86 would have told you what CPU you had when you tested it after assembling your system.
Windows tells you what you have in Settings > About and Task Manager.
Apps like CPU-Z have been downloaded a billion times and tell you what CPU you have.
Geekbench would have told you what CPU you have and how it performs.
The article mentions someone paying a bunch for a specific CPU back in April, but then never bothered actually checking it until recently... What the CPU had written on it is meaningless. I couldn't even tell you what my current CPU looked like before I installed it. It could have said Pentium 2 or 486SX or Core i-13. What mattered was that it physically fit, the system booted, and my software said "yup, this is what you paid for."
Would it not be possible to fake most of those by spoofing the model the CPU reports, like what happens with GPUs?
With GPUs you can do things like dump its BIOS, alter the identification string, and then re-flash the card.
I've modified a lot of GPU BIOSes to tweak GPU and memory clock timings or enable Mac support.
CPUs aren't that easy to modify. I am not aware of any consumer tools that can simply re-write CPU's internal code.
Regardless, the first time you run a benchmark and it shows that your CPU is really X and not Y, you will know something is wrong.