https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11379089
When I buy a piece of hardware, I want all of its potential available to me from the get go.
Hopefully this scheme will be just an option.
I lol’d.
Anyway, I bet people will figure out how to unlock them and if that means better hardware for less buck I’m all for it. Hardware piracy has got a ring to it.
Okay. I take my words back. It really is the end of the world 
Companies are not only catering to the lazy people, they’re also incentivizing them to be lazy.
turns out there’s an extra core somewhere in there
So wait, that would mean they’d have to make every processor as powerful as the most powerful one in case someone wants to upgrade to the most powerful option. Thus they increase their costs by producing only the top-tier hardware. In order to recover costs, they will increase the price of all their processor options because they know not everyone is going to purchase the most powerful one.
Perhaps this logic is not entirely sound, but I’m pretty sure someone’s going to come to this conclusion and protest it, forcing Intel to give up on it. Either that or “hardware piracy” as it was called earlier will change their mind. Or maybe it’ll just be an optional thing with some processors like Maxey said. In any case I doubt this idea will go very far.
Well you can either spends hundreds of dollars buying the same CPU at a higher clock frequency or you grab a custom cooler and overclock it.
That would be the only significant way to improve CPU performance…
So, in other words: Now you’ll be able to pirate hardware over the internet?
Thats not entirely true. Sure per processor it may cost a little more (but trust me, the production cost range between processors is mot much more than $30) but the development, research, and initial production costs to retrofit their lines to make those chips are astronomically high. So it is cheeper for them to sell all of the same chip (or just a few designs) and sell the consumer a bunch of options using locked down clocks and cores.
[cost of atom]
[cost of pentum]
Hell even amd has been doing it for there tri-cores. All tri cores are just quad cores with one of the crores turned off. Some are because one of the cores didn’t meet quality control but many are fully functioning quad cores with one disabled. Amd never created a tri core production line, nor did they ever spend the time designing a new 3 core architecture.
I’m on AMD platform and I will focus only on AMD
I’ve been AMD for a while. Glad I don’t have to deal with this ridiculous scheme.
this is bullshit
this is bullshit. i give maybe a month, at most 6 month before the security system is cracked, and the crack is available online. this is kinda like ACTA. good in theory, but wont work in rl
Interesting idea. Probably on the same level as pre-loaded DLC…
But come to think of it yeah, most of their costs are in research and development, not production. If this would actually work for them, maybe it’d be okay.
Then again, I think many people overestimate how much the CPU power affects the overall speed of the computer. Generally, things like faster memory and faster hard drive seem to be the more significant bottleneck.
damn I hope they are joking… why, intel? why?
If this goes far I’m going to lose hope on all humanity.
So say you buy an awesome computer today but you can only use the processor at 2 GHz instead of 3 GHz (whatever, you get the point), and it costs you $1000. Three years later, you decide to pay to unlock the full 3 GHz capability, but at that time, every computer will already have 4 GHz by default, at no extra cost. You would have been better off buying a $700 computer, and buying another $700 computer again, with up-to-date technology (including the better screen and overall better hardware).
It’s like buying a mobile phone and putting it in an ugly case to prevent scratches. Then 3 years later you take it off and have a scratchless phone, but the screen is black and white and all new phones now have color screens, so you basically still have an old phone, only you were ruining the design for 3 years with the case instead of enjoying its best appearance.
It sounds like an automatic online overclock that you have to pay for. Which is incredibly retarded. No, you know what Intel? go for it. make some CPU ‘hacking’ jobs for me to get some easy money from.
Not sure why you all are going loopy over this. It’s not like your are getting less for the money. You spend $300 and you will get a processor that performs like a $300 processor. You spend $800 you get a processor the performs like an $800 processor. From the sidelines it’s as if nothing has changed. In fact it could be better for three reasons.
#1 being better compatibility. Intel would be making less chips, and in turn less socket types. So they could have many of the same chip just running at varying speeds.
Secondly I would think upgrading the clock of your processor would be cheeper than Purchasing a new processor that runs at the higher clock rate. Sure the combined price of the chip and the upgrade may be more, but there is nothing stopping you from just doing that in the first place if you want the faster processor.
Third is (especially with many users here) the opportunity for free upgrades. They managed to find a flaw in the architecture of the cell, they have broken the locks on the tri core amd who says that with enough time and enough people, some one somewhere find out how to remove the stops on these things. Right now I can pirate an application that is worth more than every car I have ever owned. I think they can figure out the authentication key for a couple hundred dollar lockout chip.