Intel CPU DRM: Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do

www.engadget.com...

Hold onto your hyperthreaded horses, because this is liable to whip up an angry mob -- Intel's asking customers to pay extra if they want the full power of their store-bought silicon. An eagle-eyed Engadget reader was surfing the Best Buy shelves when he noticed this $50 card -- and sure enough, Intel websites confirm -- that lets you download software to unlock extra threads and cache on the new Pentium G6951 processor. Hardware.info got their hands on an early sample of the chip and discovered it's actually a full 1MB of L3 cache that's enabled plus HyperThreading support, which translates to a modest but noticeable upgrade. This isn't exactly an unprecedented move, as chip companies routinely sell hardware-locked chips all the time in a process known as binning, but there they have a simpler excuse -- binned chips are typically sold with cores or cache locked because that part of their silicon turned out defective after printing. This new idea is more akin to video games that let you "download" extra weapons and features, when those features were on the disc all along. Still, it's an intriguing business model, and before you unleash your rage in comments, you should know that Intel's just testing it out on this low-end processor in a few select markets for now.

Well I don't even know what to say other than;

Disgusting.

I am thinking this could be popular on eMachine type systems?


I suppose this is for people who don't do their research before buying?

This kind of thing is actually quite common already in a lot of consumer goods, digital cameras for example will have certain features locked on the base model and unlocked on the more expensive one but are exactly the same camera underneath, you can find web sites (that I guess I can't post here) that tell you how to hack such things to turn your £200 camera into the £300 model, not that I would encourage such behavior of course

Yeah, I mean that'd be my plan, buy the cpu at a "lower" price, find a cracker, and enjoy.

Its not bad to show what u can do with items..

Its called OverClocking or Modding.. After you buy the item you can do whatever tf u want..

I turned a 2800 AMD to a 3200 because i wanted it to OC, same with a video card.. its the same thing as suping up a car, you cant get into trouble here for that..

But paying 50 bucks, well it shows who the idiots are i suppose, it sucks though because if they dont know what they are doing they can destroy thier PC and have to buy either a new processor or computer all together so intel wins either way..

Idiocracy at its finest.

glad i don't have an Intel inside

Originally posted by ThichHeaded
Its not bad to show what u can do with items..

Its called OverClocking or Modding.. After you buy the item you can do whatever tf u want..

I turned a 2800 AMD to a 3200 because i wanted it to OC, same with a video card.. its the same thing as suping up a car, you cant get into trouble here for that..

But paying 50 bucks, well it shows who the idiots are i suppose, it sucks though because if they dont know what they are doing they can destroy thier PC and have to buy either a new processor or computer all together so intel wins either way..

Idiocracy at its finest.

but you are having to buy a serial code, I mean can you unlock all these features without said code? granted I'd find a cracker as previously stated.

Originally posted by DutchBigBoy
glad i don't have an Intel inside

Me either, my last 3 systems all been AMD.

No you goto overclocking.com or something like that and find your chip and people typically have a prgm that you can OC all the crap in ur PC, VC, processor memory.. Its all basic things but its a problem if you dont have decent cooling, this is where people are going to be screwed, because if they dont have decent enough cooling they will literally cook the processor..

This isn't quite the same as over clocking, as I understand it overclocking is making the cpu run at more cycles per second then it was designed to, your not actually accessing a different part of the processor.
This scheme from intel has a certain amount of the CPU's internal cahce locked off completely until you buy the card

reply to post by Lysergic


AMD here too.

Excellent news !!

In the old days you had to have a massively overpriced mobo with to fully unlock a chip or do some physical modding. Many of the chips that have been out for years are purposefully crippled in some way or another. They can usually be unlocked without problems, but sometimes there's an actual reason for it, and the extra cache, or cores were disabled because they were faulty.

The reason I say this is excellent news is because .. well, let's just say if you're clever ... this is cake.

oh just for giggles: I'm currently on a $39 e3200 oc'ed to 3.63ghz from the stock 2.5 .. stock cooler, stock voltage

I dont see how buying an addon card unlocks anything on a chip?

I know with both my old e2160 and q6600 I had to physically mod the bsel points on the chip in order to unlock the multipliers beyond 9x, and that gave me a marginal increase in performance which was not due to a faulty chip segment, but simply due to intel forcing people to pay more for an unlocked chip.

as long as people have made chips they have made certain models crippled - the old gold finger mod was interesting... So don't think you AMD guys are immune lol

reply to post by badw0lf


It's not a card it's software. I know you can use firmware to unlock GPU's but have never heard of this for cpu. I think this is great, because it means if you know where to look you can do this on your own and have a higher grade chip on the cheap without having to mess with the bios or doing a physical mod.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by badw0lf

 

It's not a card it's software. I know you can use firmware to unlock GPU's but have never heard of this for cpu. I think this is great, because it means if you know where to look you can do this on your own and have a higher grade chip on the cheap without having to mess with the bios or doing a physical mod.

No doubt, and given that there are plenty of hobbyists who already know how to manipulate the architecture of the chips physically (ie; where to join pins, break links, etc to unlock potential) if it's software based... no dramas.

I mean, how can they even expect it to work really? Once some OC'er gets it, it's then going to be torrented/spread like wildfire...

I can't see how they expect it to work, unless it's based specifically on a key they give you that is generated by a serial on your chip...

And that works wonders for nothing really. Before most software is a week old there are keygens and serial generators...

who knows, I don't know enough about this.. seems a lot of hard work going into implementing it for such a little outcome to their benefit.

This isn't anything new really. Know those AMD Phenom X3 processors a year or so back? Well those were X4 processors but one of the cores were bad. And instead of throwing them out, AMD used basically the same technique Intel is doing on their lower end processors to be able to sell these "defective" processors as a "triple core" processor at a budget price.

My point with the above is this, many modders liked the chip because they quickly found out how to open the fourth core giving their little X3 processor a little more juice, just like how someone will find out how to unlock these features from Intel without shelling out 50 bucks.

I for one think Intels an idiot for doing this, but then again we've got the choice to NOT go with Intel...

reply to post by badw0lf


This is probably true, but I would think that the amount of people that would bother to hack a chip or even be aware that it was possible is pretty minimal compared to the amount they will sell.
A lot of people that own computers are not even aware of what a CPU is, my parents / sister for example

Core 2 Quad Q6600 from 2.4ghz overclocked to 3.8ghz here.....

It seems like on OK idea. But it might be easy to hack and get the performance for free. And I think you will only see this on very low end-processors.

Other than the typical "I hate Intel at all costs" mentality, why would you consider this to be idiotic or evil on Intel's part? This is a result of improved manufacturing. As other posters have mentioned, it is industry standard practice to rebrand lower performing chips and sell them cheaper.

Essentially*(very loose generalization here), Intel makes one chip. They test the chip at the end of line and name it / package it based on its performance. The thing is now that the process has been refined to the point that they just don't have as many defective chips to sell at a lower price. So rather than physically disable cache as they used to do with the Celeron's, they now disable it in a manner that allows you to upgrade later if you want. It a business decision that allows them to sell to a cheaper market. Their main business model is based upon a tiered pricing structure and they can't throw that out the window now. It seems like this is a pretty decent compromise that still allows them to have tiered pricing and still allows all end users to have access to the chips.

Why not just increase the processor price by $50? Seems a bit of a lengthy (and flawed) way to achieve the same thing. Or am I missing something here?