Intel’s crippling chip upgrade
September 21st, 2010 by David Bradley >> 1 Comment
Is it just me or does Intel’s soon to be launched chip “upgrade” program look like they’re profit-wringing? You can buy a card to enable features of the CPU in your PC?
Hmmm.
It’s as if they deliberately crippled the chip at the factory and then sell you crutches.
- Intel Graciously Unlocks the Processing Power Your PC Already Has for $50 Fee
- Intel Releases Processor Upgrade Card Program at $50
- Intel market-testing downloadable CPU upgrades
- Everybody Wins in Intel’s Upgrade Program
- Intel Pentium Processor “Performance Upgrade”
- Intel to sell CPU performance upgrade cards at retail
- The worst, and best thing since sliced bread: Intel’s $50 processor upgrade
- Intel offering CPU DLC – extra hyperthreads (Karar)
- Intel Processor Performance Upgrade Card Boosts Your Chip For $50
- Would You Pay $50 To Unlock More Power On Your Intel CPU?

"Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong" from David Bradley. Available now on 


Leave a comment ↓
Mark // Sep 21, 2010 at 4:33 pm
On early intel chips that i worked on you had to enable hyperthreading and such. It seems pretty ridiculous to disable features such as the access to extra cache memory just so that they can have you pay extra money to access them. It seems to me that this might backfire on Intel and it wont be long before the key to unlock these extra features is hacked.