Possibly, as I said, it's by no means conclusive, however the real proof, to me, is in the question of why AMD would go to the expense of entirely removing a set of pins, as opposed to just not connecting them to the die?
Both solutions are just as effective as each other.
Whilst I'm not disputing the possibility of AMD nailing the multiplier hack in their new chips, I doubt they'd be removing pins. In fact, on closer inspection, there are four perfectly blue squares in that image -- where there should, probably, be a few golden pins and a pixelated blue background. Use a decent image manipulation program and zoom in on the area highlighted with the red lines in the image, till you get to about 12:1. It's not all that conclusive, and it's a damned good job if somebody did doctor it, but it's suspicious all the same.
Possibly, as I said, it's by no means conclusive, however the real proof, to me, is in the question of why AMD would go to the expense of entirely removing a set of pins, as opposed to just not connecting them to the die? Both solutions are just as effective as each other.
Whilst I'm not disputing the possibility of AMD nailing the multiplier hack in their new chips, I doubt they'd be removing pins. In fact, on closer inspection, there are four perfectly blue squares in that image -- where there should, probably, be a few golden pins and a pixelated blue background. Use a decent image manipulation program and zoom in on the area highlighted with the red lines in the image, till you get to about 12:1. It's not all that conclusive, and it's a damned good job if somebody did doctor it, but it's suspicious all the same.