Granted this feature has only been rolled out on a few low end Compaq systems purchased through Best Buy, but apparently Intel has been offering consumers an “upgrade” card, with nothing more than a serial code on it for $50. What does that code do you ask? It “unlocks” threads and cache on y?our Pentium G6951processor.
Yes, you read correctly. Intel will take an extra $50 of your hard earned cash just so you can use your processor, that you’ve already paid for, to its full potential.
This is way worse then when Apple charged users $1.99 to enable the Draft-N support in their wireless card. At least that was a feature that wasn’t advertised when people originally purchased the MacBooks.
So, is the hardware equivalent of DRM the hot new revenue generation model for vendors trying to make up for discounted hardware prices? I sure hope not. Otherwise those websites claiming to “make your PC faster” will be selling fake hardware unlocks to unsuspecting people instead of just bogus software.