Intel Charging $50 to Unlock CPU's Full Features

[Marcus Yam]

Want to use all the capabilities of your CPU? Then pay up!

Intel Charging $50 to Unlock CPU's Full Features : Read more

 

[hemburger]

WHAT!!

 

[ac21365]

Of course! I'd love a Corvette that only went 60mph til I paid a "highway speeds" tax!

Sigh... Of all the businesses to hop on the nickel-and-dime bus, Intel wasn't one I was expecting.

 

[Onus]

This is money-grubbing. Soon enough, unlock codes will be published. I'm not at all a fan of crackers and pirates, but something like this was born to be hacked.

 

[u2sunstuff]

What's the problem? This is nice , looking forward to paying less for the same hardware while enthusiasts like me are going to unlock it by hand at home , little sister your new computer comes cheaper...

 

[adaman2576]

Intel is taking a page out of apple's book... Anyone remember having to pay to enable the bluetooth chip on the ipod touch 2g???

 

[renami9]

you know, this may not be a bad thing, it can be a good thing. i'll just buy a cheap "locked" CPU, and then i'll just wait for someone to publish the "unlock" code or how to unlock it. yeah, i say go for it.

 

[elel]

I sure hope that someone comes out with an unlocking motherboard, like we already have for AMD

 

[jestersage]

I think this would be a gaping hole for exploitation by unscrupulous/intrepid enthusiasts. i5 750 with hyperthreading or i3 530 with turbo, anyone?

Maybe this will be Intel's answer to AMD's ACC... but with a price-tag.

 

[Miyasashi]

If for instance the CPU's are sold 50 dollars cheaper than the actual value and you're not sure if you need the extra power you'll save some money.

But if it's overpriced and you have to pay extra... well you know what I'm trying to say.

 

[Miyasashi]

If for instance the CPU's are sold 50 dollars cheaper than the actual value and you're not sure if you need the extra power you'll save some money.

But if it's overpriced and you have to pay extra... well you know what I'm trying to say.

 

[ares1214]

Bit late on this one Tom's. But in any event, this is an OK (at best) concept, but it is priced terribly. They are charging over $150 with this card added in for sub i3 530 performance...which costs $115. I dont even think it works with the G6950, just the G6951, which is only an OEM cpu right now, so its not like its even an upgrade.

 

[abhijitkalyane]

Yep, just a way of milking the cash cow. You have already bought the hardware but now you need to pay to get the max performance. It may fool many users into thinking that this is an "upgrade", while all the while they already owned it.

 

[Guest]

So does it mean this is the only way to do things like over clocking? Or is this just a way for people who don't want to mess with FSB and voltages and just want a easy upgrade path? Personally I think its a bit much for what you get. But considering the fact most computers like Gateway and Dell have little in bios or motherboard settings to overclock. I guess this might be a better choice then to replace the CPU with a better one.

 

[outlw6669]

I think the real news here is that there is a way to unlock the full feature sets of these CPU's.
I only wonder if this is possible with all the gimped i series or just a few?

Either way, once someone figures out how Intel makes this work, we can look forward to even better value from their budget offerings.

 

[DjEaZy]

... WTF!?!?!?! Intel Charging $50 to Unlock CPU's Full Features?!?!?!?! Greedy m0#h3rf@#$rs!!!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

LOL at this, seriously...im sure people will find a way to unlock them without paying....Its so gay, its like paying for overclocking, which you wouldn't...I doubt the features are worth $50. Sadly, people WILL pay the money, and then realise its not really much faster than it was before. Intel will probably claim some rediculous performance increase that does not hold up in real world apps. I cant think of a good point to this idea....

 

[jazz84]

[citation][nom]outlw6669[/nom]I think the real news here is that there is a way to unlock the full feature sets of these CPU's.[/citation]

THIS. If anything, this is Intel's money grubbing turning into an instance of them tipping their hand. If CPU features can be unlocked via software (especially cache), that's a game changer for the enthusiast crowd. Once this gets reverse-engineered (which it will), Intel is going to be kicking themselves. The enthusiast crowd will have a way to get better performance from a cheaper chip and the mainstream probably won't even show any widespread interest in this to begin with.

It does raise a question for me, though. What does this mean to the whole binning concept? I've always been under the impression that features such as "extra" cache were disabled due to chip defects, which in turn is a way to increase yield and keep costs down. Does this now mean that Intel is taking measures to hobble good silicon just so they can maybe grab an extra $50 down the road? Seems like that would be a more expensive process in the long run...

 

[Travis Beane]

Many chips are already artificially binned to meet certain price points, at least this gives them a chance to have their old, completely usable cache and the such back.

 

[maflynn]

I wonder how long this will last, since most people will just ask the google for the unlocking codes. They'll be out on the intarweb before too long.