Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do

[greenmedic88]

Soleron said:

greenmedic88 said:

...

True, but it would still be pretty odd if you took that to the extreme and offered a $700 upgrade to activate a $1000 i7 980x when the original purchase was for a $300 i7 930 (with two cores disabled, 4MB of cache disabled and a locked multiplier).

Although that would actually beat having to sell a processor before upgrading it to a better chip.

If done in the right way, both sides win. Intel doesn't have to manufacture another chip to get that sale, and the consumer only has to enter a code to do it, rather than order a boxed CPU and replace it. It may make the upgrade market actually viable among the majority of computer users who don't know/care about CPU tech.

The 'hardware piracy' potential is huge, however. Intel has stopped overclocking on the new Sandy Bridge CPUs, so maybe that will replace it?

That's the huge caveat of course.

I'm curious to see how the bus frequency lock out will work on Sandy Bridge since they supposedly only allow something like a negligible 5% overclock, which is essentially the same thing as having a locked multiplier.

Part of the problem for Intel is that mobo manufacturers have made it far too easy to turn a $200 processor into a $600 processor (like the 920 being easily OCed faster than a stock 950). Not that I'm complaining of course.

But since they've started marketing and selling processors with unlocked multipliers other than the top tier "Extreme" series, I'm guessing that's where they're going for those who intend to overclock. With an added premium naturally.