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Intel To Offer CPU Upgrades Via Software
derGoldstein writes "Intel will again offer CPU upgrades through software. In the past, the upgrades gave you HyperThreading and more L3 cache. This time upgrades will actually increase CPU frequency: 'Intel Upgrade Service offers three different upgrades on second generation Core processors: Intel Core i3-2312M processor, Intel Core i3-2102 processor, and Intel Pentium G622 processor.' The page provides benchmarks of the 3 upgrade options."
According to the FAQ, if you replace your motherboard, the upgrade is no longer valid on the chip. It must store the information in the BIOS or at least use an identifier from the BIOS.
It also says you must be running certain versions of Windows 7 to install the upgrade but does not mention if an upgraded system would work in Linux or BSD or any other OS after installation.
I'm interested in a crack for this not to cheat intel out of money, but to activate it from BSD or Linux and to "fix" it myself if I have to swap out motherboards.
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Out of interest, if you know that $200 will get you a certain set of specifications, you decide those are the specifications you want, you buy it on the expectation that you will get those specifications and when you put it into your computer you find that you do actually get those specifications ...
... why do you think you're being scammed at purchase?
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Have you looked at the power-to-price curve of AMD and Intel? AMD beats Intel so thoroughly on the performance/price curve that I wonder why anyone bothers with Intel. The only part where Intel wins is the performance of high-end CPUs, but that's only because they pack more effective cores into one unit. Performance of single-threaded programs is roughly equal, so Intel can't claim an edge there as well.
You can care about performance of either single-threaded or multi-threaded programs. In the former case, AMD wins thanks to lower price, in the latter, it still wins as you can pile more CPUs and still get it cheaper. The only case when choosing Intel might be a rational choice is the sudden jump between prices of 1-CPU and 2-CPU systems if your needs are just above the top performance of best AMDs but below the point Intel would need two CPUs as well.
Intel's advertising tries to compare CPUs with different prices. To get a meaningful comparison, you need to compare performance with a fixed price or prices with a fixed performance.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It usually suggests that competitive pressures on the seller, at least in that segment, are sufficiently low that they derive greater benefit from improved price discrimination than they do harm from making their prices less competitive. Given their fab prowess vs. AMD, it isn't totally surprising that Intel sees themselves doing better by voluntarily cutting the value of low end parts, rather than letting higher-end buyers get away with paying less.
(Secondarily, and specific to this particular instance, it probably doesn't hurt that consumer PCs frequently get crufted up and 'slow' over their lifetime and Joe User has no idea why. It's rarely the processor's fault, so what Intel is selling won't help them; but "make your computer faster!" is a well established product line, and Intel's offering won't technically be a lie...)
Say that you buy a can with "12 oz" of soda inside. You open it up and drink it. Then you take a look at the can. The can actually holds 16oz. And the manufacturer actually made all 16oz of soda. But to sell a 12oz can, they put 4oz of the soda within a thick plastic resin, thus destroying it for all time. The bottom of your 12oz can is 4oz of wasted plastic graveyard devoted to market segmentation.
They sold you 12 oz of soda, and you got 12 oz of soda. But they ALSO made an extra 4oz of soda. Since you didn't pay for that extra 4oz of soda, they destroyed it rather than letting you or someone else have it.
And yes, that's how the chip industry works. That's also how the car, and certain other industries, works. From the business perspective, it is a way of segmenting your market and supporting tiered pricing options. From an end-consumer standpoint, the company lobotomized something they sold to them, because they aren't the overpaid elite. And whenever they're waiting for an install to complete, or a copy of Outlook to open, they know that bits of their lives are being wasted because a company artificially decided to make the processor in their machine suck 20% more.
It makes perfect business and engineering sense. But that's not how people feel about it. The average person isn't buying a specs sheet. They're buying the fastest processor they can afford. And as it turns out, the processor they bought could be even faster, but some company stopped it for completely artificial reasons. People are going to be frustrated by that.
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