Intel wants $50 to software unlock CPU features

[SXRguyinMA]

yep, load of BS if you ask me

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/16802/...akTown+News%29

[diluzio91]

completely... 5$ says there is a keygen for it almost as soon as it comes out...

[farlo]

this is why i choose AMD 95% of the time, unless someone specifically requested intel.

[Luke122]

I think it depends on what the CPU is going to cost initially. My understanding is that this is only (atm) applying to certain i3 models. If your budget is tight, you get the best you can, and then later on, you can upgrade the cpu for $50. Seems like an interesting idea.. I'd be curious to see if the upgrade is WORTH $50 though. If the price difference on the cpus is substantial, this might be a good way to get a cheap upgrade. Alternately, it might now.

[Drum Thumper]

This is what happens when Intel starts making chips for Apple....

Just sayin...

[x88x]

My understanding is that this is only (atm) applying to certain i3 models.

Actually, they're Pentium chips, not i-series. Think like the position the Pentium D or the Celeron filled (idk if they've dropped the Celeron yet). They're the bottom of Intel's barrel atm, which makes the software unlock price even more ridiculous. I can't find an actual retail listing for either, but according to this article, the G9650 only has an MSRP of $87 to begin with...so you'd be shelling out 57% of the price that you paid for the CPU just to unlock features that the hardware already supports!

If your budget is tight, you get the best you can, and then later on, you can upgrade the cpu for $50.

As I mention above, the problem is that it's not a real upgrade. The hardware that they sold you originally already supports the features, they're just enabling them with a software patch. Think of it like this; you just bought a new car for, say, $10,000. You're driving around, happy, and then you realize that you can't actually use 5th gear and only one of your wheels is getting power. So, you take it back to the dealership and they tell you: "Oh yeah, the transmission and drivetrain are already set up to go into 5th gear and give power to both rear wheels, but that's disabled in your car. If you pay us another $5,700 we'll enable it though." Completely ridiculous, right? Plus, the fact that they'll even do this means that the parts have already been tested to meet their standards for operating with these additional features, so it's not like unlocking a locked core on a 3-core AMD chip or something.

Another thing I just realized...going off the prices listed in the article I linked, getting a G9650 ($87) and then buying the $50 'unlock', makes it more expensive than an i3-540! For context, some specs:
G9650 : 2.80GHz : no hyperthreading : 3MB L3 cache : 73W : $87
unlocked G9650 : 2.80GHz : hyperthreading : 4MB L3 cache : 73W : $87+$50 = $137
i3-530 : 2.93GHz : hyperthreading : 4MB L3 cache : 73W : $113
i3-540 : 3.06GHz : hyperthreading : 4MB L3 cache : 73W : $133


As far as I can tell, this is pure profit for profit's sake, jacking up their bottom line by screwing over the consumer. Just another in a long history of crappy business practices by Intel, and just another reason for my to avoid them in the future.

[Oneslowz28]

I have been waiting for the beginning of the end.... maybe this is it. If nothing else, Intels recent screw up with letting AMD take over the mid range market, and letting the performance level go stagnant, might give AMD the space they need to reclaim the top spot.

I completely agree with Joe's comment about this type of thing happening when you start doing business with crapple. Something tells me Jobs had a hand in this idea.

[mDust]

I don't think it's too evil. I'd support it if the performance difference was larger, but $50 for that meager improvement? Nah.

I think if they locked some features on a chip and allowed me to pay less for it, I'd buy a more expensive chip and then upgrade it later if I so desired. I'd agree to do that.

Think of it like a credit card. You use a credit card to buy things that you don't have money for at the moment...such as a CPU. Intel is allowing you to purchase a chip that you cannot afford and charge you a little more for the convenience only if you want more power. If you don't need the power, hey, you just got a cheap chip!

I've been waiting for a company to do this with chocolate chip cookies for decades. I pay for a cookie with only a few chips, and then upgrade it when I get home! Profit! What?

[Luke122]

As I mention above, the problem is that it's not a real upgrade. The hardware that they sold you originally already supports the features, they're just enabling them with a software patch. Think of it like this; you just bought a new car for, say, $10,000. You're driving around, happy, and then you realize that you can't actually use 5th gear and only one of your wheels is getting power. So, you take it back to the dealership and they tell you: "Oh yeah, the transmission and drivetrain are already set up to go into 5th gear and give power to both rear wheels, but that's disabled in your car. If you pay us another $5,700 we'll enable it though."

I dont think that's quite an accurate analogy. Think of it more like you bought a cheap car, and it works fine, but for an extra $5700, you can get more power and performance from it. Sure the hardware is there and capable of it already, but you are paying to enable it. Sounds a lot like a ecm upgrade to me; diesel engines in particular.

Why bother buying the cheapo in the first place? AH HA! I think it's part of Intel's push to drive more sales towards higher performance models. I'm not really agreeing with the practice, but I understand. Chris Rock knows what I'm talking about.

[x88x]

Sure the hardware is there and capable of it already, but you are paying to enable it.

That's the whole problem I have with it; you're paying the same for the hardware, but then paying Intel for the 'privilege' to use it to its actual capabilities. To use your analogy of an ECM, it's like if they sold you the car with it already installed and programmed, but wouldn't let you turn it on until you pay them more. That's crap, you already bought it, just flip the damn switch!

I guess my point is, when I pay somebody (be it a person or a company), I expect to receive something from them that I did not already posses. That may be a product, it may be a service, whatever. In this case, I'm paying them to let me use something I already bought from them. It's like in Windows 7 Starter, where it won't let you change the background. Why won't it let you change the background? Is it because it's not possible? No! It's because somebody somewhere decided that they could use that as a way to squeeze more money out of their customers by disabling something for no other reason than to try and convince the person who is buying the product that it's not good enough and they need to buy something else.

The most obvious proof of this (imo) is the pricing. Unless they make the G9651 less than $50 (which I'm sure it won't; it'll probably cost at least as much as the G9650), they're just squeezing money out of people who either don't have it in the first place or don't know any better. If you're buying the bottom-end chip, it's either because you didn't know what was in the computer that you bought or because you can't afford a better chip. If you then want to "upgrade" you chip with this crap, you end up spending more than a better chip would have cost you in the first place.

It's like if they were selling bottled water: a 24oz bottle costs, say, $2.50 and a 32oz bottle costs $4. The 24oz seems like the better deal, right? But it turns out that the 24oz bottle locks the spigot closed when it reaches 8oz left. Oh, but don't worry, you can 'unlock' that water for just $1.75! That's a lot less than a whole new bottle, right? Great deal! ...but wait, you just paid $4.25 for 24oz of water when you could have paid $0.25 less for 8oz more. Oh, but you didn't have $4 when you bought the first bottle; you needed water now, and you only had $2.50!

At the end of the day though, no matter how bad (or not) we think it is, I'm sure diluzio's right...somebody'll RE it as soon as it comes out (if not sooner), and we'll have a brief period of low-mid-end chips available for the price of a low-end chip.