Intel Letting Customers Upgrade Underpowered Chips

What's next, their upcoming processors gonna carry a 180w tdp or something? :cool:
(intel tdp = average, amd tdp = maximum)
 
AMD sells the same processors in Black Edition for a premium with unlocked multi's. In one case they charge a premium for extra features, in Intels case they are charging a nominal fee to upgrade processor capability....at first I thought this was a bad deal but if you think about it they are doing the same thing just giving you the option to upgrade without paying a pc shop to physically upgrade the cpu.

If you tell average joe he can upgrade his pc for $50 without ever opening the case, he's going to be all over that. Think Walmart people folks.....you have to stop thinking the way we do here when you consider these things. Average Joe doesn't care or want to know, all he wants to know is he gets upgraded for $50 without any effort. Sold!
 
nobody_here said:
AMD sells the same processors in Black Edition for a premium with unlocked multi's. In one case they charge a premium for extra features, in Intels case they are charging a nominal fee to upgrade processor capability....at first I thought this was a bad deal but if you think about it they are doing the same thing just giving you the option to upgrade without paying a pc shop to physically upgrade the cpu.

If you tell average joe he can upgrade his pc for $50 without ever opening the case, he's going to be all over that. Think Walmart people folks.....you have to stop thinking the way we do here when you consider these things. Average Joe doesn't care or want to know, all he wants to know is he gets upgraded for $50 without any effort. Sold!
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Well the difference is that the consumers know what they're getting for the Black Edition because they are manually fused off from the rest of the processor thus locking down the multipliers permanently. However these processors are aimed at enthusiast whereas the non-multiplier ones are aimed at the general consumer. Intel sells processors that have upgrade plans to the general consumer and then take advantage of their lack of knowledge saying "Hey for 50 bucks more, you can unlock your processor".
 
Kaitian said:
Well the difference is that the consumers know what they're getting for the Black Edition because they are manually fused off from the rest of the processor thus locking down the multipliers permanently. However these processors are aimed at enthusiast whereas the non-multiplier ones are aimed at the general consumer. Intel sells processors that have upgrade plans to the general consumer and then take advantage of their lack of knowledge saying "Hey for 50 bucks more, you can unlock your processor".
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What the difference between that and "For $50 you can get a faster processor," that's currently used? Absolutely nothing.. except that a person could buy something cheaper now and later upgrade without having to buy a new CPU or even an entire system.
 
Kaitian said:
Well the difference is that the consumers know what they're getting for the Black Edition because they are manually fused off from the rest of the processor thus locking down the multipliers permanently. However these processors are aimed at enthusiast whereas the non-multiplier ones are aimed at the general consumer. Intel sells processors that have upgrade plans to the general consumer and then take advantage of their lack of knowledge saying "Hey for 50 bucks more, you can unlock your processor".
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You got it all wrong. If they want the performance from the start they can pay $50 more to begin with. Or they can save $50 and upgrade later. They aren't misrepresenting or misleading anyone. To use your logic it would be unconscionable for AMD to sell a 955 X4 for $100 when the consumer could have a 955BE X4 for $150 but in that case the customer really gets screwed because you can't unlock the multi with a $50 code.
 
Jailbreaking is just a term for hacking phones and the legislation covers for phones.

I don't remember anything about hacking computer hardware. How would they even know if you hacked your hardware? I doubt there are any true legal issues.

Besides people have been doing this for years. Just like flashing your video card to unlock it to a similar higher series card.
 
ryan_975 said:
What the difference between that and "For $50 you can get a faster processor," that's currently used? Absolutely nothing.. except that a person could buy something cheaper now and later upgrade without having to buy a new CPU or even an entire system.
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The difference is that people - right or wrong - expect to be charged the value for what they are given. Consumers expect cost plus pricing. This is not the way supply and demand works, but its what they expect either way.

Essentially, if they can sell me a CPU for $70, then adding something to it, that doesn't cost them anything, shouldn't cost me anything either.

It's similar to how AT&T used to piss their customers off by having them pay an extra $2.99 a month for voice dialing, when it was a function of the handset not a function of the service.

Customers in general frown upon paying for something they don't feel costs the provider something.

You buy a car and you want more HP? You pay the tuning guy to install parts. People don't have a problem with this because the tuning guy likely actually had to do some real work in order to install and make the parts work.

If - on the other hand - he had just walked up and pushed a button to enable more HP, then many people would likely complain, especially if it cost more than a superficial amount of money.

People like to see the tangible work they are paying for, either in the form of a product, or in the form of a service. The whole concept of paying to ungimp something they already bought pisses a lot of people off. And i don't blame them.
 
This makes me angry deep down inside.

I used to do computer sales and I kid you not retailers make as little as $10 on a low-end CPU while here Intel comes along and can potentially swipe $50.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037634913 said:
The difference is that people - right or wrong - expect to be charged the value for what they are given. Consumers expect cost plus pricing. This is not the way supply and demand works, but its what they expect either way.

Essentially, if they can sell me a CPU for $70, then adding something to it, that doesn't cost them anything, shouldn't cost me anything either.

It's similar to how AT&T used to piss their customers off by having them pay an extra $2.99 a month for voice dialing, when it was a function of the handset not a function of the service.

Customers in general frown upon paying for something they don't feel costs the provider something.

You buy a car and you want more HP? You pay the tuning guy to install parts. People don't have a problem with this because the tuning guy likely actually had to do some real work in order to install and make the parts work.

If - on the other hand - he had just walked up and pushed a button to enable more HP, then many people would likely complain, especially if it cost more than a superficial amount of money.

People like to see the tangible work they are paying for, either in the form of a product, or in the form of a service. The whole concept of paying to ungimp something they already bought pisses a lot of people off. And i don't blame them.
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You give the average consumer far far too much credit. Most people are fairly ignorant and gullible. Look at how successful late night Sham-Wow type $19.99 products are. Have you ever watched the average consumer shop for a computer?

Average Joe: "Excuse me sir, which one of these is faster?"

Blue Shirt Guy: "Well sir the fastest one is the one over here with the higher pricetag, it's much faster because the number is bigger!"

Average Joe: "Ok you sound like you know what you're talking about, I'll take it!"

What Average Joe doesn't realize is that every single one of those processors were on the same slab of silicon to begin with, that the company binned them and depending on sales numbers modified and packaged them accordingly.

That's why Intel can do this, they spent time and money sorting them and ensuring that they had a field upgrade-able product. Honestly I don't see the problem because they are selling you something extra for extra money. Average Joe doesn't care either. You give people far too much credit. But in this case they get something more for spending more. If they can't get over the fact that every part has that potential, that's their problem, but most people would never care to even know how or why that is possible.

lord_emperor said:
This makes me angry deep down inside.

I used to do computer sales and I kid you not retailers make as little as $10 on a low-end CPU while here Intel comes along and can potentially swipe $50.
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So put the upgrade cards behind the register and do like the successful Big Blue stores do, charge a maintenance fee for installing it. Add in other useful value-add items like complimentary anti-virus updates, Windows updates and updating your 5 most used applications to the newest version along with the drivers for the system and then run Disk Cleanup. Attachments bro....I used to manage retail....it's really easy to sell most people up on things. You might say that's dirty business because they could do it themselves. I say no, they can't do it for themselves, they need you to do it for them otherwise they'll be calling their favorite tech nerdy friend/sibling/coworker to help them figure out how to do all that.
 
What the difference between that and "For $50 you can get a faster processor," that's currently used? Absolutely nothing.. except that a person could buy something cheaper now and later upgrade without having to buy a new CPU or even an entire system.
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Is pure genius from Intel if you can get the public to swallow it. We are talking about the sub 400.00 sector here. Get your laptop for 369.00 and upgrade to 10% faster down the road(bigger difference than ram upgrade). Or pay 419.00 now. This is a world of difference to the people these products are targeted at(and WAY better than the Atom).

Cheers!
 
ryan_975 said:
Intel as well as AMD have always had CPU features disabled to sell units at lower price points. All Intel is doing now is allowing you to re-enable those features. The phrase "You get what you pay for" has never been more true.
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The problem with this is that instead of AMD/Intel producing more powerful chips, at a cheaper price, they decided to instead lock down features to keep the prices high.

It's like GM producing 6 cylinder engines but in some cars they disabled 2 cylinders. This way, they can keep the 6 cylinders at a much higher price, while meeting the demand for 4 cylinders. Of course no car company does this, because customers would beat the dealers to a pulp.

What this means is that manufacturing CPUs has gotten so cheap, that Intel can get away with keeping prices high while disabling features on their CPUs.
I don't see this being hacked anytime soon. People have been working for years to break open Intel's microcode to enable features (e.g. hyper-threading, multipliers, cache), but have only managed to do so on accident while never figuring out how they did it.
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You obviously weren't around when nforce 1&2 motherboards were around. Many people were modifying motherboard bios's to enable features and tweak overclocking. For example, the Asus (A7N8X Deluxe) got so many modified bios's that it became insane. Some had better overclocking, while others had better memory timing, and others had updated SATA controller firmware, new options in the BIOS, and etc.

Unfortunately, this isn't something you see anymore today. Though the art of modifying a bios is still around and kicking. For example, there's a community that inserts SLIC into a motherboard bios for reasons I know I shouldn't mention.

Much like the iPhone and the PS3, if it hasn't been hacked yet, you obviously haven't attracted the right people to do the job. By having Intel sell this, it'll grab the intention of bigger hackers, and we'll be a bios flash away from getting what we paid for. By we, I mean Intel owners. I buy AMD. ;)
 
ocellaris said:
Because AMD wouldn't do anything crazy like make a 4 core CPU and sell it as a dual or a triple core CPU... Nope nothing like that would ever happen.
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Apples and oranges dude.

The AMD dual and triple cores are when they have determined it won't be a 24/7/365 stable quad core. They sell what they know works...IE, it won't work as a quad, but three cores are 24/7/365 stable, so we will sell it as a tri-core, with warranty support for those three reliable cores. They make it so the extra cores can be unlocked, if the end user wants to do it, and take the chance...but they didn't turn off the core just for the hell of it.

Intel is taking features that work perfectly fine, and locking them up until you pay for the upgrade...whole different ballgame there.
 
Konig-Wolf said:
Apples and oranges dude.

The AMD dual and triple cores are when they have determined it won't be a 24/7/365 stable quad core. They sell what they know works...IE, it won't work as a quad, but three cores are 24/7/365 stable, so we will sell it as a tri-core, with warranty support for those three reliable cores. They make it so the extra cores can be unlocked, if the end user wants to do it, and take the chance...but they didn't turn off the core just for the hell of it.

Intel is taking features that work perfectly fine, and locking them up until you pay for the upgrade...whole different ballgame there.
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i disagree. if they want to engineer the chips to be all identical and only enable as many sections as they want in order to fill orders, with the option of turning those parts on later, i say that's smart manufacturing. one manufacturing process. huge manufacturing savings.

AMD in your example would have the customer take their PC to a shop and pay a tech to pull it apart and then have to spend several hundred bucks to purchase a full new CPU to upgrade the old one even though the old was was functionally just fine.

in that scenario AMD is having you purchase three cores only to turn around and throw three of them away in order to buy four more. so now you have bought 7 cores in two cpu's and only get to keep 4 and spent twice as much
 
nobody_here said:
i disagree. if they want to engineer the chips to be all identical and only enable as many sections as they want in order to fill orders, with the option of turning those parts on later, i say that's smart manufacturing. one manufacturing process. huge manufacturing savings.
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They could lower prices instead, as they should. If they're manufacturing is getting that good, then the savings should be passed on to the customer.

AMD in your example would have the customer take their PC to a shop and pay a tech to pull it apart and then have to spend several hundred bucks to purchase a full new CPU to upgrade the old one even though the old was was functionally just fine.
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You think what Intel is doing is considered an upgrade, while the rest of us consider it extortion. You already had the hardware, but what you're doing is "unlocking" it

Unlocking and upgrading are two very different things. To give you some history, ATI pulled the same stunt with their Rage 3D chip. Some Rage chips got newer drivers which performed better, and customers were pissed. How would you like to go to the store, thinking you buy a new upgraded product, but instead got the same thing but with newer drivers? You want Nvidia and AMD to do the same with their graphic drivers?
in that scenario AMD is having you purchase three cores only to turn around and throw three of them away in order to buy four more. so now you have bought 7 cores in two cpu's and only get to keep 4 and spent twice as much
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I'm surprised people forgot about the Radeon 9700 era of computing. It wasn't uncommon for ATI to take Radion 9700 Pro's and disable a few pipelines so they could resell it at a much cheaper price. Of course the problem was that sometimes ATI had to take a perfectly good R300 chip and then purposely disable the pipes to meet the demand of sales. There's also a chance that the disabled cores may work, but not as stable as ATI would want it to.

AMD does the same with with the X3 and X2 chips. The disabled cores are bad, and instead of throwing it away, they decided to just disabled the bad core.

To keep you on track, Intel disables perfectly good hardware to extract money from the customer, while AMD disabled the cores to sell a cheaper but perfectly working product. Enabling Intel's hidden features will do no harm to your machine, while AMD's will.

Your trying to compare a toaster to an oven.
 
Ashbringer said:
AMD does the same with with the X3 and X2 chips. The disabled cores are bad, and instead of throwing it away, they decided to just disabled the bad core.

To keep you on track, Intel disables perfectly good hardware to extract money from the customer, while AMD disabled the cores to sell a cheaper but perfectly working product. Enabling Intel's hidden features will do no harm to your machine, while AMD's will.

Your trying to compare a toaster to an oven.
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AMD disables plenty of perfectly fine working cores on many of the chips. Their yields are not so completely shitty that they need to make X2 and X3 chips using quad dies out of necessity.
 
Tell that to the thousands of people who have successfully bought and unlocked 555BE and similar examples from 2 to 3 or 4 cores. And what about the motherboard manufacturers who made money selling us a feature that did nothing more than unlock the fully functioning cores on the processors that we were told were not even there. They were selling X2's with four functional cores without letting people know. Of course the enthusiast community figured it out eventually. That doesn't change the fact that average Joe would have picked up the box and read that a 555 was a dual core cpu. How is he supposed to feel when he reads an article saying he could have simply flipped an option in the BIOS on and gained two more cores instead of purchasing a 955 cpu.

I see your angle but honestly, its the same thing rehashed. Intel is charging money to enable more features. AMD is not telling you its there but in return for playing it off they allow motherboard manufacturers to make money on you second hand. You see eventually it gets back around.

And that bit about how Intel should be a Robin Hood passing on the savings down to the consumer? LoL. Welcome to real life, where a company is a company, exists only to make money for shareholders, and should never be spoken about as-if it was a person. It is a empty money making thing. This makes money by giving you more performance for more money and being very up front about it. I see no problem.
 
nobody_here said:
Tell that to the thousands of people who have successfully bought and unlocked 555BE and similar examples from 2 to 3 or 4 cores. And what about the motherboard manufacturers who made money selling us a feature that did nothing more than unlock the fully functioning cores on the processors that we were told were not even there. They were selling X2's with four functional cores without letting people know. Of course the enthusiast community figured it out eventually. That doesn't change the fact that average Joe would have picked up the box and read that a 555 was a dual core cpu. How is he supposed to feel when he reads an article saying he could have simply flipped an option in the BIOS on and gained two more cores instead of purchasing a 955 cpu.
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Like I said, in AMD's situation they will sometimes use perfectly good X4 CPUs and retard them into X2's. The fact that there's people who tried to unlock the cores and found some bad ones means that it's not 100%. Intel's will be 100%. It's impossible for AMD to do this without crashing some peoples computers.
I see your angle but honestly, its the same thing rehashed. Intel is charging money to enable more features. AMD is not telling you its there but in return for playing it off they allow motherboard manufacturers to make money on you second hand. You see eventually it gets back around.
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Not really no. What happens with AMD motherboard manufacturers is that it's a mistake. Wasn't meant to unlock anything. Most likely bios updates prevent this from happening.

And that bit about how Intel should be a Robin Hood passing on the savings down to the consumer? LoL. Welcome to real life, where a company is a company, exists only to make money for shareholders, and should never be spoken about as-if it was a person. It is a empty money making thing. This makes money by giving you more performance for more money and being very up front about it. I see no problem.
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You want a reality check? I got some for ya.

#1 It's going to be hacked or pirated like crazy. People will buy a cheap i3 and unlock it into a i5 or i7 or whatever.

#2 You either have to flash each motherboard to do this, or install a special CPU driver in Windows. In the first scenario, you'll be stuck using your motherboard. In the latter scenario, you'll be stuck using Windows. Unless for some reason Intel started putting flash memory into their CPUs.

#3 AMD is going to eventually release the Bulldozer CPU. It'll either be as fast or faster then what Intel currently has on the market. Considering how much cheaper AMD is compared to Intel, it'll be cheaper to go after Bulldozer, then anything Intel has. No hidden locked features, and still substantially cheaper.

Remember Intel's Processor ID that everyone hated? Yea, expect the same to happen with this.
 
Ashbringer said:
Like I said, in AMD's situation they will sometimes use perfectly good X4 CPUs and retard them into X2's. The fact that there's people who tried to unlock the cores and found some bad ones means that it's not 100%. Intel's will be 100%. It's impossible for AMD to do this without crashing some peoples computers.
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A few but for the most part if you bought a 555 you ended up with a 955. Intel paid extra on the line, even if marginal, to guarantee 100% success rate. Don't you feel they deserve to be paid extra for the extra services? Don't you feel like a $50 upgrade that truly provides a better performing processor is a great value for the consumer? I can tell you the average consumer will be all over this. They will eat it up. That's all that matters.

Ashbringer said:
Not really no. What happens with AMD motherboard manufacturers is that it's a mistake. Wasn't meant to unlock anything. Most likely bios updates prevent this from happening.
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Actually no, they market that feature specifically. BIOS updates don't break it. Not only do they not break it, they add more processor support when they update.....it's a feature that AMD doesn't advertise but they certainly condone and encourage.

Ashbringer said:
You want a reality check? I got some for ya.

#1 It's going to be hacked or pirated like crazy. People will buy a cheap i3 and unlock it into a i5 or i7 or whatever.

#2 You either have to flash each motherboard to do this, or install a special CPU driver in Windows. In the first scenario, you'll be stuck using your motherboard. In the latter scenario, you'll be stuck using Windows. Unless for some reason Intel started putting flash memory into their CPUs.

#3 AMD is going to eventually release the Bulldozer CPU. It'll either be as fast or faster then what Intel currently has on the market. Considering how much cheaper AMD is compared to Intel, it'll be cheaper to go after Bulldozer, then anything Intel has. No hidden locked features, and still substantially cheaper.

Remember Intel's Processor ID that everyone hated? Yea, expect the same to happen with this.
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i have no idea where the hell you went here.......you're way out of touch with the average consumer bro.....

there's no difference. look at how successful Facebook game point cards like Farmville are....people know that everything is there and they are only unlocking it.....they don't give a shit. It's a commodity. You want more you pay more. How it got there is no concern and as a consumer you get no opinion.

What about Ford with their modular motors? It's the same motor with different heads bolted on. You pay more to get the additional performance. The base engine is the same and was there all along. Are people supposed to be pissed that they know their motor can do so much more but because they decided to go cheap they got less?

What is so hard to understand? Pay more get more, pay less get less. It's that simple.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037634913 said:
You buy a car and you want more HP? You pay the tuning guy to install parts. People don't have a problem with this because the tuning guy likely actually had to do some real work in order to install and make the parts work.

If - on the other hand - he had just walked up and pushed a button to enable more HP, then many people would likely complain, especially if it cost more than a superficial amount of money.
Click to expand...

Acutally, you can get a good bit of tuning done to improve your car by having the guy alter the code in your car's computer. They charge for this, and people gladly pay it.
 
Elledan said:
Also called 'extortion' in some circles :)
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I agree it feels kind of shady, but purposely disabling parts/features is standard practice in the CPU/GPU world. The difference here is that now they are allowing you to unlock them if you pay. $50 does seem a bit steep, but on the other hand look at what Apple/Dell/etc charge for extra memory ($100 to go from 2GB to 4GB on the $999 macbook air :eek:)

It makes sense from Intel's perspective I guess. Worst-case scenario is no one unlocks their CPU, and Intel rakes in cash with "locked" CPUs as they have been doing for decades. :cool:

CPU performance is almost irrelevant for the average consumer nowadays though. 100% (let alone 10-15%) more CPU performance isn't really going to help with facebook, email, spreadsheets, etc.
 
cybrsage said:
Acutally, you can get a good bit of tuning done to improve your car by having the guy alter the code in your car's computer. They charge for this, and people gladly pay it.
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True,

but in this case they are actually doing the writing of the software and testing of it to make sure it works. I don't think most people would have a problem with that concept.

Even if they paid a third party to "tune" their Intel chips I don't think they'd have a problem with it.

its the concept that they are paying the company that made something and then limited it, to unlimit it again, that I think would draw the ire of the consumer.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037637043 said:
True,

but in this case they are actually doing the writing of the software and testing of it to make sure it works. I don't think most people would have a problem with that concept.

Even if they paid a third party to "tune" their Intel chips I don't think they'd have a problem with it.

its the concept that they are paying the company that made something and then limited it, to unlimit it again, that I think would draw the ire of the consumer.
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Do you realize how many things are intentionally limited to sell for a lower price? Internet, CPUs, GPUs, hard drive capacities (leaving sides of platters inaccessible, or lmiting available sectors via firmware locks), Windows... No one ever has any problems with these things. It not like Intel is asking you to pay for a Core i7 990x and then giving you a Pentium G622. You pay for what you get, if you want more then instead of going out, paying full price for a better CPU + labor, you instead just pay a token amount and unlock what you already have.
 
MrLonghair said:
What's next, their upcoming processors gonna carry a 180w tdp or something? :cool:
(intel tdp = average, amd tdp = maximum)
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It's pretty well established that Intel's TDP ratings are far more conservative than AMD's, not the other way around.

It's pretty easy to measure the power draw and see that the TDP rating is not the average power used, on Intel OR AMD.
 
Arcticfox04 said:
DLC for processors.

Bravo Intel sell your cheapest processor for cheap and have retailers make a low % profit and rake in the pure profits of DLC.
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Exactly. It's crazy that intel's even doing this. They should just do it for free if they are going to do that. I don't this to become a regular [practice.
 
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