I just heard about this, and the rage I have is insane.

I know about binning, and I love it. Test a batch of cpus at a certain threshold, if they fail, you mark them down using a huge safe operating limit, and disable the broken cores, and set to a speed they will work fine at and not fail. We overclockers then buy those chips put them back at factory default, and using expensive aftermarket shit, can take chips that would normally run so hot at that speeds they'd melt your motherboard, and keep them cool enough to work.

I don't have a problem with binning, there's always going to be defective products, it'd be stupid and unaffordable to buy chips if they had to get rid of every one with a defect, and if someone else can figure how to make them run sure.

I do have a problem with selling computer chips perfectly able to run at a higher speed without problems, gimping them on purpose, and then selling a fucking update that unlocks the extra cache and threads. Thats as fucking shady as EA, Lionhead, and other's long time practice of selling you unlock codes for shit already shipping on your goddamned game DVD.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/

May not bother most of you, but this is just shady to me.

 

It's not shady, it's just a new sales model that we're not used to. When I first heard about this I had a similar negative reaction to it, but now that I think about it, I can see the point in these chips for the consumer.

It provides a good upgrade path if you find that you need more CPU power than you thought when you first purchased the machine. If you buy a cheap dual core machine to surf the net, or as a media box and then later on you take up photoshopping, video editing, or bigscreen TV gaming you might find yourself in need those extra 4 cores then they're yours with a simple software upgrade. No need to open the box or go and fork out for a whole new CPU when you can just buy an upgrade online. The same goes for when you're fixing a relative's computer and it's barely chugging under the weight of bloatware.

It's not going to be a good change for overclockers and I don't know whether or not I'd ever buy one myself, but I don't think this is going to be a huge problem for Intel to sell to the consumer.

 

Hmm, about that. Isn't it a bit of a bad idea from their part, considering how some of the consumers may hack and create a distributable patch that lets people upgrade their CPU for free?

 

I guess it depends what you mean by "shady"; it's obviously not illegal but certainly seems faintly unethical to me; there's just something about the practice of "unlocking" stuff you already own (ala Midknight's example of assorted games with unlockable content) that really rubs me the wrong way. Probably doesn't help that the economics of the thing are all screwed up; these processors cost more to make with the extra cache and whatever hyperthreading needs, but only a subset of the customers will be paying for that extra down the line, so someone's going to be paying more than they should (most likely both those who upgrade and those who don't).

Compulsory car analogy: you do not see any cars that allow you to pay to enter a secret code to up their performance (some have magic buttons to do that, but at least they don't make you pay).

Obviously that's pretty dependent on a personal definition of ethics; to me it's down there with razor blade manufacturers and electric toothbrush head makers, but I'm sure it made perfect sense to some MBA-types at Intel, and clearly does to other people out there as well.

I would say that Intel had better not try this shit on me, but I don't think it will take off; I predict a lot of consumers won't care for it, and if it does start then someone is going to crack the system and everyone's going to get a free upgrade, at which point Intel will have to back down.

 

Nah, it's not just a new business model; it's so shady you can practically see the white boy rapping.

You're not 'buying an upgrade' online. You're activating a part of your computer that you already bought, online. For a price. Gillette doesn't put rubber over their blades and charge you to take them off.

 

That's not how the economics of CPU manufacturing works. It's very, very different to the economics of car manufacturing. A single batch of CPUs will produce percentages of fantastic CPUs, not so fantastic CPUs, less cores, less cache, lower clockspeeds, etc. depending on the yield rates of the manufacturing process. Typically yield rates improve over time and slower CPUs for the bottom of the market become scarce, so Intel, AMD, etc. will underclock their better performing CPUs and market them as cheaper, slower CPUs to keep the market and their income predictable and stable.

This already happens, and it has happened for many years. You might think it sucks that Intel and AMD will cripple a fast CPU and sell it at a slower speed or with fewer active cores than it should be, but overclockers love it when this happens to the production cycle because it means that they can often find cheap, under-clocked CPUs and clock them to surprisingly high speeds such as happened with the Celeron A, or the G0 SLACR Q6600.

If all Intel is doing is to enable consumers to activate cores that before now would've ordinarily been disabled before sale anyway (with no one apart from overclockers any the wiser), then what's the problem? Intel and AMD been selling deliberately underclocked chips for a long time.

Look at AMD's triple-core Phenom CPUs. They're not triple-cores, they're quad-cores with one core disabled. Some of them will be disabled due to manufacturing flaws, but sooner or later (if not already) they're going to disable those 4th cores just to meet the demands of the lower tier of the market. Would it really be a problem if AMD allowed their consumers to later on activate that perfectly okay core?

edit: I should point out that it probably costs AMD exactly the same amount of money to produce a triple-core X3 720 as a quad-core X4 920. I'm lead to believe that they both come from the same batch. Which CPU becomes which depends on yield rates and how AMD interprets the demands of the market.

I'm not seeing anything that Intel is doing here as being any more "shady" than what they've already been doing for a long, long time. I'd even argue that it has the opportunity to be a good move and allows the consumer to have more flexibility after they've bought their new box.

Overclockers aren't going to like it, of course.

 

As long as it's not illegal to unlock these "additional features" by yourself (as overcloclers have been doing for years), it's fine by me.

 

Overclockers haven't been unlocking extra features though. They take failed chips that run way hotter or with broken cores then they're supposed to, so they were stamped with a clock speed that keeps the chip into more tolerable temperatures and stable operating ranges. Using expensive hardware to cool the chip, and some extensive tweaking, they can get the chip to perform as it was made, instead of how it was rated by quality assurance. If not done properly, you wreck your shit.

Overclocking doesn't even work on a wide range of shit worth bothering with, some chips are just too damaged to fiddle with outside of their stamped range.

This shit is just flipping a switch, and you have a more powerful chip, which still supposedly, will operate within their extremely restrictive safe range of speeds and temperatures. No hoops, no testing. You're paying extra for something you already own.

Sure, they've downclocked even good chips before, the demand for the e6600 was through the roof, they grabbed some of the higher up chips when they launched the next line, and downclocked and locked them to get rid of them. The difference is, they didn't say "Pssst hey buddy, I know we sold this to you, but for 50 moooooore bucks..."

I just see it as a slippery road, that if it works, they're going to keep doing it. I see your point about liking it eventually, as it'd make upgrading easier, I'd love to pay another 100$ and get a newer generation of video card for example, but I have serious issues with something that comes off to me little better then the crack dealer giving you your first hit for free.

 

Actually, no, it's been done before with graphic cards and probably a lot of other stuff too. link

 

Link didnt work, but I see it's talking about the 6800. I had one, that I unlocked the pipes for fine. I had 2 others that couldn't run with the pipes unlocked, they'd crash, and overheat, artifacting like hell.

Nvidia didn't send me an email asking me if I wanted to pay 50$ to unlock something in the chips bios that'd run perfect though.

 

I don't think this'll be any good for us tech heads any time soon, it's going to affect the bottom and mid-range market. The only way I can see me buying one for a good machine is when CPU speeds have well and truly plateaued and Intel are selling 5GHz CPUs with 16 cores and I decide to buy one with only 8 cores activated, because that's enough for my needs at the time.

I don't really trust Intel not to fuck this up though. It seems good in theory, but I'm sure they'll manage to piss me off somehow - there are too many ways to mess this up.

Intel's been hating on overclockers since the 90s, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see them use the law, or change the law, or employ technology to stop them - especially if they represent a threat to their business model.

 

It feels somewhat wrong, but it's a viable option and, after reading this article I can agree with it. The article mentions something that stroke a chord with me - market realities.

Sure it would be nice of Intel to always sell their CPUs at a low price with all those features and full performance enabled - but it's not realistic or sensible. Producing many different chips is costly, and in the end, the upsides outweigh the strange feeling of buying a crippled CPU - costs are reduced and you get the additional option of increasing your performance at a later date.

 

Yeah, but they're not just upgradeable. They don't give you better software or a bug fix or something. They basically change cores = 2 to cores = 4, and thats it. Fuck, my motherboard lets me disable as many cores as I want to. If it shipped like that, with cores disabled, in a locked BIOS, and all a tech had to do was come out and type in a secret key combo to enable them, I'd be livid. I just see more RAM dropped in, a better sound card, a video card, or hell even more usb hubs, as an upgrade, not changed a 1 to a 2, or a 2 to a 4.

We covered this earlier though, a huge majority of class A proc's are Class B ones with defects that will run fine as class A only, with certain exceptions for when the market gets flooded with demand, or they end a line. It's just not the same thing as selling you a chip with better chip inside of it (potential) and then refusing to unlock it unless you pay more.

It creates false scarcity. If the chip costs them the same to make it no matter what, why the hell should you pay more for the extra functionality, if it's already fucking there? I know I wouldn't, and I'm sure it'll be cracked inside of a month. Even if in reality it were to be the greatest thing EVER, I refuse to feel like I'm being ripped off.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, though it looks like these CPUs are only being shipped in white box PCs for now. I doubt Intel is going to be concerned when these are cracked. That's probably what they're waiting for so that they can lobby for new legislation to make it illegal to do so, if it isn't already. Wouldn't they be able to frame it as a theft of service?

I'm sure that Intel, probably alongside AMD, can make a good push with lobbyists to see a new law put forward to protect their changing business models.

That's what concerns me the most about this change of Intel's. It's not the LOL HAXORED, or them selling me CPU cores that I already own; it's the potential hit to my freedom and liberty to do whatever the hell I want to my own box. I own it, it's mine.

Intel haven't mentioned a whisper about targeting people who crack the core upgrades, so maybe I'm jumping at shadows. None the less, this is my biggest concern about it.

edit: I realise that I'm being hypocritical here. Despite my concerns about trading away liberty for convenience, that's exactly what I've done with my PC games. Almost everything I buy is on Steam now.

edit 2: Some of you might be wondering why an Aussie would be concerned about USA legislation. Thanks to the wonders of our Free Trade Agreement we're required to have parity with some USA laws, including IP, iirc.

 

Considering how few apps are actually capable of using the available cycles on modern, general purpose chips, I don't see this as a big deal. Pretty much everything of note is memory bandwidth starved, a product of imbalanced subsystems, decades of marketing to ignorant consumers the analogue of how high one can make the tachometer of one's car go without leaving the garage, and real physical limits such as the speed of light or how many copper pins one can route into a given size chip without interference.

Running at lower clocks or fewer cores uses less power and in most cases any differences (outside of bragging rights) aren't all that consequential. Compute-heavy stuff like graphics ends up offloaded to the GPU anyway. With this approach, manufacturers give consumers/IT departments an option of choosing a reliable, lower-clock version of the hardware, or paying for a less reliable, marginally faster version of the same. I suspect in the end, most would opt out of an upgrade, instead going with the lesser chip and putting the cash into a beefier video card, more DRAM, etc.

 

I first heard rumors of this about a month or so ago. As people have said, it seems like these chips are being targeted more at the mainstream crowd than the high-end consumers. These are the same people who will willingly pay the Geek Squad $100 to install a stick of RAM, so I doubt they will have any issue paying some extra cash to boost their processor speed or unlock an extra core or two.

As Pers said, most apps today won't use more than 2 cores, so it's not like those extra cores are really necessary for the majority of users. Heck, your typical white box PC buyer will probably be using their machine mostly for web surfing and email. You can do that pretty handily with a single core machine. Those that do need the performance will almost definitely still be able to buy completely unlocked processors.

As for Middy's comment about Intel hating on overclockers, I think their recent release of the K chips with unlocked multipliers is a step in the right direction. Even the locked multiplier Intel chips (the recent ones at least) have been pretty good overclockers. I haven't tried it myself, but I've seen plenty of people with clocks of 4Ghz+ on locked Intel chips like the i5-750/60 and i7-930/50.

 

Assuming that there is going to be some crack hitting the tubes shortly after each piece of gimped hardware gets released, wouldn't this be a good thing for the savvy and morally flexible consumer? Buy the gimped CPU for cheaper and then crack it to it's full capacity.