Wow, Intel, great move. BUt you forgot one thing:

Everybody and my mom will be unlocking their CPUs without paying with the simple solution of third-party programs.

This is equivalent to binning chips as they do anyway (lowering clocks/cache/features on the lower end). It's neccessary for market segmentation and has always been done.

If Intel sold all chips at the highest market segement they could perform at (bearing in mind almost all chips could do 3.5GHz fine), there would be nothing to sell below $100.

I see no issue as long as it's clear to the consumer what they're buying and why they didn't have it before.

It's partly what you pay for with Intel. Of course the other part of that is the warrantee coverage, that more or less guarantees that the chip won't crap out prematurely (naturally invalid once you start overclocking).

Binning is still essentially based upon where a given chip was cut from a silicon wafer though, which theoretically determines any variances in composition that could lead to greater or lesser efficiency before the chips are even etched.

Whether it really makes a $700 difference between a $300 processor and a $1000 processor cut from the same wafer is pretty wide open to debate though.

But serious overclockers will actively seek out specific lots of processors from a given plant at a given time if the chips being produced when those stars were aligned resulted in chips that were unusually good overclockers.

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?

Impressive. DLC for hardware, this is new.

Yet another reason to hate the seventh console generation. I was about to use MUCH stronger words until I realized it would not be a good idea.

its because things like this that i don't buy intel processors for more than 10 years!

this

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.

Or they could just be selling the processor at full capacity at the base price and watch sales skyrocket?