I actually know a guy who orders tri-cores on a regular basis, however, and this is a big however, I heard it was a way for AMD to recoup money from the defective cpu's that suffered from the TLB problems, I know a workaround was implemented through bios but users reported a 10-20% performance decrease, there solution at a silicone level was to deactivate one core, now I thought this was a spook story, however the innitial tri cores have disapeared reet quick, I smell a fish....but your right, it seems "special" to say the least...why bother...