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About LinkBacksRead more.$50 code will unlock hidden performance on entry level CPUs.
Read more.$50 code will unlock hidden performance on entry level CPUs.
What a joke!
That's like buying a car with the air bags disabled. But for a $50 payment they will enable it again.
... But, saying that if they released one for the lower spec i5 cpu's to enable it's four native cores (which i'm pretty sure the top spec one has enabled) it would no doubt sell like hot cakes.
Far too expensive - You can get a CPU for not much more. Also it would need to make a far greater speed improvement than i expect this would give before it would tempt users. If they reduced it down to ~£5 mark I could definiatly see it working - bit like chipping a car.
Extreme Edition anyone?
Originally Posted by Agent
Hackers on your mark!
Get set!
GO!
If they introduce it in any meaningful way, it will be hacked pretty rapidly.
It's a sensible idea in a way. Buy a cheap CPU now, and when in 5 years time it isn't up to task, whilst you might be too afraid to buy and fit a new processor, you might be confident enough to pay £35 to "upgrade" it.
Only problem is that there's very little they can do that will provide a meaningful boost. Making a 5 year old pentium have hyperthreading isn't going to change anything at all as far as the end user is concerned.
I can also see it leading to a huge wave of fake "CPU Boost" programs that claim to make the changes for free, and actually do nothing of the kind. Not that they need a new tack to scam consumers, they seem sufficiently thick for the scammers to just continue with the tried and tested methods
Intel to offer CPU ‘upgrade’ codes => AMD gains new marketing opportunity?
Not particularly a fan of either side, having had both. I can only assume that Intel make *so many* chips now that they need a new way to bin some with features disabled and make a little extra money off it at a later date. Seems like madness, and the price seems unreasonable. $10 or euros perhaps?
Car manufacturers have been been doing this for ages (although not for £50 and a code) with engines. Difference in horse power even though all the actual engine parts are identical. They normally charge you a few grand for the privilege, although they sweeten the deal by chucking in a couple of hundred worth of cosmetic changes as well.
Very interesting that!
But, how much does the CPU that they're piloting with actually cost?
I'd maybe be tempted to upgrade my CPU now if they'd implemented it a bit ago, say it unlocked the multiplier or something like that, cos my motherboard is the limiting factor on my overclock now I think, as it's getting older I keep having to roll the overclock back a little bit.
Sounds like they're just trying to make money on overclocking; this combined with the next-gen CPUs supposedly having fixed clocks except for the k models. How much more money do they need?
I suppose this could let you do simple upgrades though, depending on how high yields of perfect dies are you could purchase, say, a Core i3 then pay the difference a while later and upgrade it to a Core i7 without having to open the case. I mean it might not appeal much to enthusiasts but I could see it being popular with your average user. I'm sure Intel will do their best to make it unhackable, maybe use efuses or something and customise unlock codes to CPU serial numbers, there's very little chance of it being hacked that way unless someone got hold if Intel's private key.
How much is the next step up the CPU ladder? Typically £35 will let you move 2 steps up the CPU ladder... so why not just buy the better faster CPU in the 1st place?
As for it being a late life upgrade... really? Why usually by late life cycle the difference a minor change like this will make to performance will be negligible.
All this suggests to me is that yields are coming back very favourably.
Still, if overclocking is being locked down (intentionally or otherwise) in the near future, then you were going to get zero extra performance out of your budget chip anyway. If you don't buy this, then you'll still get zero extra performance. Whilst it's too expensive, I don't care - I wouldn't buy it anyway, but at least the option is there I suppose.
(R)etailers will make a killing here though. Shops, online or otherwise, are going to be falling over themselves to force this on you. The ill-informed will be setting off the $$$ signs in the eyes of those managing such shops.
What interests me with this is that it's not applicable to the retail G6950. The part code you can upgrade is a G6951, which I assume is an OEM only equivalent. So it looks like Intel are providing OEMs with a deliberately hobbled chip for their base units, only to profit further by generously offering users the opportunity to "unlock" the full power out of their processor. Strikes me a lot of consumers are going to want to know why they didn't get the full power chip with their computer in the first place - and it won't be Intel's door they're knocking at.
As to the comparative prices: neither the G6951 nor the "unlocked" G6952 appear on ark, but the G6951 appears to be spec-identical to the retail G6950 (£76), while the G6952 is basically a 2.8GHz Core i3 - this doesn't exist at retail, but the 2.93GHz i3 530 is £89. So the price differential of the two processors *at retail* would be < £13.
I don't have an issue with the idea of this.
Lets face it, it doesn't cost Intel any more money to manufacture a top end processor vs a bottom end one. So whether you pay the difference initially by getting a good chip, or pay for it in two parts with an unlock code is really irrelevant. The big advantage I see here is for the retailers, but will also benefit consumers as well, and by retailers I mean the bricks and mortar kind like Best Buy or PCWorld. This means they can stock fewer individual systems and "upgrade" them with a bit of software. Those that want a cheap system get it and those that want a powerful one can get that too. Stock availability is higher, and that is a huge problem for retailers, each foot of shelf space has a very real cost, so having fewer physical models helps massively.
I know that when you buy components there is usually less of a difference than the $50 for this code, but that isn't really the case with most laptops. The bottom end systems have a lower margin to make the base price look better, then you start changing spec and the price rapidly rises. There is no difference with the code system than with physically different PCs.
If you could extend this to whole cores and cache volumes I think this would make a very good way of either spreading the cost of ownership, or extending the period your system is current for, depending on how you look at it.
Oh, and the bottom line is, this is not aimed at any of us. It's aimed at Best Buy and PCWorld customers. And either this is just an experiment by Intel, or they have already done the market research that suggests this would be a popular option.
Err, don't see why people are surprised by this.
I'm with jim's logic, Intel are yielding better than they expected.
What do you do? The chips exist to differentiate the market, some people can afford to spend £1k+ on a CPU, others, want something for only a few quid. Whilst something like the atom is a complete design to be cheap, it leveraged ideas from their other CPUs, concepts which had been paid for by the normal much higher priced CPUs. But they were able to take some of those techniques and adapt them.
This is no different.
They have to have some CPUs for the lower end market, but they are been fabbed at a higher speed than they required. So why not allow people to upgrade?
It makes good sense, they are still able to have the very low price point they need to get the £300 laptop market, but also they are not harming the £500 market.
Meanwhile for consumers it is just more choice, they can pay upfront, or later, without having to use credit. (if you can't afford the extra £30 for the faster laptop, you can now later pay £40 say 6 months later, not bad if your poor and unable to get good value credit (or just don't want to be in debt!)).
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Exactily. A perfect example being the Mini One/Cooper. The only difference on the engines is the Cooper's throttle is allowed to open more!
However, theis fake differentiation doesn't sit right with me.
Give it a few years and licensing performance for your CPU will be like licensing Microsoft software!
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