Yeah, their is truth in the fact that AMD will be releasing tri-cores and yes, they will be quad-cores essentially with one "dead core" and no, you cannot just "Re-activate" the core just for future reference all that easily 
http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/news/2007/09/17/AMD-To-Sell-Tri-Core-Processors/p1
I read it somewhere else too but too many articles to recap, so little time.
I think the tri-core with one dead core can be a great thing as well as a terrible curse. One dead core means less heat for the same surface area on the die, which will in turn allow higher clock speeds with less heat. On the flip side, it's almost stupid to just disable one core, but it seems to be the best plan of action; I'm just wondering what exactly their pricing scheme will look like because if priced well, that may really be quite tempting for some people because it's got the power of 3-cores not 2 or 4 and keeps nice and cool (presumably moreso than 4 cores) and should be hopefully more overclockable and run at higher clock speeds without a problem.
Maybe they will satiate our desire for an unlocked multiplier with at least one processor in this generation hopefully yielding high results unlike the 6400+ BE and 9600 BE.
Disabling one core is probably better than redesigning the entire architecture for one mid-high range processor line. I think they should be alright as long as profitability is still a high priority and they price these well to make money, perform and sell well.
Slmclarengt
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