Intel Reduces New CPUs’ Performance Until Owner Pays USD 50

September 20, 2010 - 5:09am

Similar to what some publishers do with their games' DLC, Intel is now selling underpowered CPUs and charging customers for the privilege of unlocking their full - already on board - potential.

The new program started with the Pentium G6951 CPU (coupled with Intel DH55TC or DH55PJ motherboard), which comes with a 3MB level 3 cache and with no support for HyperThreading. However, for a $50 fee Intel can remotely flip a digital switch to enable a fourth Mega Byte of level 3 cache as well as HyperThreading.

Users who want to "upgrade" their G6951 CPU have to buy an Intel's $50 "Processor Performance Upgrade Card" then download a program from Intel's website. The user then enters the card's PIN into the program which can be run on Windows 7 only. A benchmark - provided by Intel - comparing the "upgraded" G6951 CPU to the plain one is available in the screens tab.

The new program is hardly justified, given that it costs Intel nothing to enable features that are already present on the chip.

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Comments

old news

This is old an old practice. All chipsets can be unlocked to full potential. Why sell a processor at top speed to everyone at a high price? Some people cant afford it, so they lower the clock speed and charge less, but you get less. This sounds like a good idea. Instead of paying 99.00 for a lower clocked processor, then having to fork aout another 150 later for an upgrade, you just pay 50 bucks. My question is, will the 50 bucks be worth it in performance, Or would going to a new chipset be a better value.

old news

This is old an old practice. All chipsets can be unlocked to full potential. Why sell a processor at top speed to everyone at a high price? Some people cant afford it, so they lower the clock speed and charge less, but you get less. This sounds like a good idea. Instead of paying 99.00 for a lower clocked processor, then having to fork aout another 150 later for an upgrade, you just pay 50 bucks. My question is, will the 50 bucks be worth it in performance, Or would going to a new chipset be a better value.

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Disloyal practices are a "standard"

Intel line of work in 2002-2007: "The chipmaker believed paying Dell, Acer, Lenovo, HP and NEC to delay or stop the launch of machines with its comparatively small competitor's chips inside, was fair play. The EU did not. And it also didn't believe giving manufacturers 'loyalty rebates' on the condition they bought almost all of their chips from Intel was okay either." Now, try to tell me that this company respects the costumer... Ref: [url removed]

Laptop Manufactures are already throttling their hardware

This isn't a new concept. I worked for Dell over 6 years ago and they were selling laptops that were the same hardware but were different specs. The cheaper models just had different firmware which throttled the CPUs. They weren't charging for upgrades but they were making huge profits on the higher spec laptops when the hardware was exactly the same.

Big future scam.

starts out like this now. within a couple of years you will be paying a subscription fee to use your pc along with internt, games and subscription costs. Think about it, corporations have had to pay a yearly fee to microsoft for a long time now, and microsoft has been looking into makeing all pc owners pay it to for a while also. just imagine if intell got in on the action, your $4000 high end gameing pc will have costed you double that before it became obsolete. What a fricken rip off scam intell is looking into.

DO IT!

So worth it. Get one - find a crack or solution - £10 job off ebay from china probably - even split that three way between geek mates - reap the benefit of a cheaper prcessor! Hahahaha... pay,hahahah - sure I'll pay... With my fooooot up your

Sounds like an awsome idea,

Sounds like an awsome idea, think about it, intel doesnt have to produce the less performance cpu instead can save money on producing just one cpu. From the sounds of it you can buy the cpu at full speed or choose not to and always be able to upgrade it to its full potential later on. As long as the money saved from reducing production line costs is passed onto the consumer. thumbs up from me :)

Sounds like an awsome idea,

Sounds like an awsome idea, think about it, intel doesnt have to produce the less performance cpu instead can save money on producing just one cpu. From the sounds of it you can buy the cpu at full speed or choose not to and always be able to upgrade it to its full potential later on. As long as the money saved from reducing production line costs is passed onto the consumer. thumbs up from me :)

Has potential

Well this might actually have some potential if say this $200 CPU with upgrade possibility performs as well as a $200 CPU without the upgrade possibility. This would let Intel focus on manufacturing 1 cpu instead of two different cpus which hopefully would let them lower the cost of CPUs. Anyone else see where I'm going with this? Also I would totally buy the chip and just hack it.

Except that Intel doesn't

Except that Intel doesn't make a bunch of different CPU's. Well, the do, but not in the way you seem to think. They have different processor lines; all those lines are EACH made to a separate set of specifications. Depending on how well each individual piece of silicon ends up meeting those specifications will decide which chip it ends up being "binned" as. Think of it like this; You're a farmer, and you plant a field full of corn. Come harvest, you pull off all the ears of corn and sort them by size, and then decide what to sell for what price. This is more or less what you do when you manufacture processors; You try to make the chips as close to perfect as possible, and then you sort them into different bins based on how close to perfect they come. Now on to how this relates to the article; Say they have three bins; Extreme Editon, mid-range, and cheap-o. Very few people are going to want the EE's, so the overflow from that bin will filter down into the mid-range bin, and any overflow from the mid-range bin will filter into the cheap-o bin. Each bin will have it's speed set by the microcode that Intel flashes it with; This means that you'll fairly often have a better chip selling at a cheaper pricepoint. So what Intel is basically trying to do here is to keep selling higher-bin chips as lower-bin chips, but keep it possible to allow them to perform as the bin-level chip that they actually are. On paper, this sounds like a great idea, and it really is, but the reality is that in practice, Intel will abuse this, and use it as a way to extort more money out of people in the long run.

To clarify my second

To clarify my second paragraph: Take Intel's LGA 1366 chips for instance; They've had TWO sets of specs; one for 45nm, and one for 32nm. pretty much all chips on LGA 1366 packages (except *maybe* some of the very low-end Xeons) are made from one of those two specs. The 45nm spec covers the Core i7 920/930/940/950/960/965/975, along with the Xeon 3500 series, and the Xeon 5500 series. The 32nm spec covers the Core i7 970/980, the Xeon 3600 series, and the Xeon 5600 series. Depending on how well a specific chunk of silicon meets the manufacturing specifications, and what bins need chips, will determine which model it eventually ends up being sold as.

Amusing

It's amusing how so many people are complaining about having to pay again for features "already present". Doesn't this sound a lot like those monthly subscription pay-to-play games like WoW where you already pay a lot of money for the game, then you have to keep paying? Another example is LOTRO, which is free-to-play, but if you want to have additional bank space and other stuff (that is already present in the game), you have to pay a monthly fee.

yeah but this is hardware,

yeah but this is hardware, something that is physical, its like buying a bike and im not allowed to use all the gears unless i pay extra. that's just retarded and i hope intel goes under if they go through with this stupid idea.

Hmm

Can a third party company bring out their own “Processor Performance Upgrade Card” and sell it at a lower price? I hope there will be a big lawsuit fiasco over this.

if any ed party did sell it

if any ed party did sell it that'd be both highly illegal AND mean you could do it yourself for free. and why would there be a lawsuit? nothing illegal about what they're doing you americans sue anyone who does different or that you don't like.

wow your peoples fear and

wow your peoples fear and fanboysim is pathetic. yes this is a really dumb move by intel but theres a simple way to stop it you don't have to switch to amd which no... is not always better bang for the buck and NEVER can compeat in the high end market. simply just.. don't buy this chip! if it doesn't sell will this program will never move on. and really while it sounds bad its not to horrible if done right. its almost in a sense like sli. you can't afford the good cpu right away, so this helps you a little bit gets you something decent right away, until you can afford it in the end.

It is not at all like

It is not at all like SLI With SLI, you get a card that runs at its potential and you can even overclock it yourself. Then you buy another card which can provide a vast improvement in performance. Do not justify this shit. Besides, I bet this will just be a new nifty thing for hackers to get their hands on. I bet we'll see some cracks for it soon.

okay just think for a second

okay just think for a second YES this cpu does have stuff disable but its not like your paying for that stuff twice your its price cheaper to compare to a cpu that does not have that stuff at all. it is exactly like paying part of the cost up front, then paying the rest in the end. but until you pay the rest your cpu is throttled a little.(or simpler. you buy a $200 cpu then want to upgrade to the $250 cpu but instead of having to buy a whole new cpu. you just pay the difrence it it speeds up) why is his consent so hard for people to understand? so long as intel doesn't mess the pricing up and over charge with this feature its a really good feature... and yes likely hackers will crack it and there you go you just got $50 off your cpu. also do remember over clocking voids a cpu's warranty. they do NOT have to let you over clock. making something good at over clocking is them being nice. besides over clocking does NOT add hyper threading or even touch the cache, so, pointless to bring over clocking up at all. plus its likely you can still oc this cpu normaly

AMD better price for power

Thes only makes me like it more and more of my HexaCore AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition. Why give 800 euros for an Intel processor when I can give a 300 per AMD that despite not being so powerful it is very close by. The stupiditi made me forget intel once and for all. A shame because I even liked the intel. One question in Portugal runs a rumor that a amd is branch of intel. Is this true?

because that 800 one by far

because that 800 one by far out preforms the phenom in games and this is a gaming oriented site. not sure how well the phenom stacks up in other areas but in games its useless. and this is only one cpu thats coupled with only 2 motherboards its very specific likely a very cheap low end proc, until we see just what the cpu is actually retailing for and how fast it is, its pointless to say how good or bad of a move this really is and no amd is its own separate company.

AMD better price for power

Thes only makes me like it more and more of my HexaCore AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition. Why give 800 euros for an Intel processor when I can give a 300 per AMD that despite not being so powerful it is very close by. The stupiditi made me forget intel once and for all. A shame because I even liked the intel. One question in Portugal runs a rumor that a amd is branch of intel. Is this true?

AMD better price for power

Thes only makes me like it more and more of my HexaCore AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition. Why give 800 euros for an Intel processor when I can give a 300 per AMD that despite not being so powerful it is very close by. The stupiditi made me forget intel once and for all. A shame because I even liked the intel. One question in Portugal runs a rumor that a amd is branch of intel. Is this true?

Greeedy greeeedy...

In cheap pcs i agree people don't use most of the cpu but average pcs for gaming it's totally greedy... even so, updating software, browser performances and etc will suffer from lengthy slowdowns... :S

-=whatever=-

You want the whole picture take a look at the money these guys will be raking in. Any fool with an eye for profit can see that yes most people do not use the full capability of their processors, so lets put out chips at reduced performance, and then sell upgrade cards so they think they getting more, when the should of just got it all to begin with. By the way, this is regardless of any competition between brand performance, it is solely an individual company experiment because they realize the average processor out performs the majority of users needs.... It's All About The Benjamins Baby!

Worst. Idea. Ever.

What is this DLC for my hardware now? Fuck intel. I'm not going to buy deliberately crippled hardware. I'll buy from AMD and get comparable or better performance for less money.

Not Happy Intel!

This is a terrible, money grabbing idea. While it may make things "more affordable" on some level I hardly see how this benefits those of us who like to customize our computers by scratch. Not to mention, how would this effect overclocking? Would we have to pay an extra fee in order to activate the "overclocking feature" with some "Intel Overclocking Power Card"? No Intel. This is not a good idea.

The future is AMD

This is a cheap trick from Intel to get more money and will cost them People that are loyal to them. Dont worry, AMD Fusion APU's (CPU + GPU) will kick a.. when they come out and so far they havent done any dirty tricks. Intel on the other hand has had several Law suits from US/EU.

oh yes fusion so good... just

oh yes fusion so good... just like spider was so amazing? and wasnt there another one... face it amd can ONLY handle the main stream market, even the lowest end intel is still the better deal. and this is also only 1 cpu on 2 motherboards... this is NOT over all their chips.

this is a good move.

sorry for AMD fans but it still does not compare to Intel and will probably never catch up to Intel. most people don't even use the full capability of there systems so most people wont even notice a difference. if you also notice it is only on one type of CPU, not there whole line of them. also dollar to dollar, the life of the CPU's Intel's is way ahead of AMD and Intel is in 80% of all computers worldwide. If you can't afford a Intel chip then the choice is going to be AMD but if you can afford it then get a Intel chip. stop being stupid fan boys and look at the whole picture.

To Anon

Go F U C K yourself intel arse licker, ill always buy AMD, Intel always wanting more money for tech that aint all that, hope Intel fucking die

lol

thats why dumb people are easily separated fo their money. still with intel anyways. be sure soon or later someone make a program to "upgrade" intel chipset for nothing. but its probable people like yous till paying only to look cool

???

Its only one type of CPU? You must have a screw loose, this will be implemented, in time, with all other Intel CPUs. Its a great rip off.

My ignorance makes my eyes bleed

I started with Intel thinking that it would be a nice running computer. Now with AMD's "better bang for buck" supreriority, and with Intel resorting to needing us to double buy stuff, in fact how would this work if we constantly upgrade our parts? We would require to reinstall Windows 7 and what then? Sorry your computer is different than before, therefore the extra price you paid for your processor is invalid, please pay us more to ACTUALLY USE YOUR PROCESSOR. Im a fully converted AMD. I'll stick with my mistake of a rig till PCI-e 3.0 comes out, then I'll do the life changing switch.

pretty smart....

I usually never post on this stuff....BUT.. I have to say this is a very intellegent move on Intel's part. Why?!?!?!? Simple.. I hate Intel, I've always been a big AMD fan and mostly because the AMD CPU has always been very scalable and affordable. But think about it.... this little move is probably going to work. It's going to be cracked and I know Intel made it very easy. So once everyone finds out that it's been cracked they'll buy the product thinking they're getting away with something but at the end of the day Intel doesn't lose anything but still gains in market sales....they did on this purpose knowing that people would try to cheat...just like we always have done with overclocking, only just make it easier....I hate say it but good move Intel...:)

Intel is so much like Microsoft.

AMDs have always been superior & this crock of shit proves it. Good luck w/that plan Intel, I'm sure you'll do real well now considering this ingenius business decision vs. AMDs dumb idea to purchase 1 of the 2 heavies in the GPU game. Hmmm, should I buy the shitty Intel processor that costs more than the AMD equivalent, & then spend $50 more to turn something on that's probably just gonna get hacked anyway, or just get an AMD & be better in every way in the first place? Ohhh & they even include their own benchmarking tool to show you how much performance you just bought yourself? Great guys you are Intel. That's just awesome that you'd throw in your own benchmarking tool to reassure me that I'm not a tool for buying something from you twice!!!

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