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Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

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Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#41

Post by lupire »

grandinj wrote: post #36
donatj wrote: post #35

What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical. My thoughts on reasons they might have done this. I honestly have no idea, these are just uninformed guesses. - The Charitable Answer: There actually is some sort of…

It costs money to validate a new processor on an old motherboard, and no corp wants to waste money on a product they have already sold.

The new processor isn't sold yet.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#42

Post by a1o »

jsheard wrote: post #9
causality0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Submissions talking about the architecture of the Game Boy don't need to be tagged 1989.

Mentioning the Game Boy would date it implicitly, they don't make Game Boys anymore. Intel is still around.

"they" Nintendo doesn't. But "they" random people from the internet make FPGA motherboard of Gameboy that is compatible with factory buttons, case and accessories.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#43

Post by Qem »

donatj wrote: post #35

What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical. My thoughts on reasons they might have done this. I honestly have no idea, these are just uninformed guesses. - The Charitable Answer: There actually is some sort of…

> Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical.

x86 market is a near monopolistic one, with two companies cornering most of the market. Monopolies can afford to sustain irrational/inefficient practices as long it helps to squeeze the consumer. I hope RISC-V succeeds in breaking this duopoly. Perhaps now with the latest round of sanctions against China, if their full industrial might is thrown behind open designs, we may have some hope to crash the duopoly.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#44

Post by mrandish »

accrual wrote: post #33

A couple of historical CPU mods similar to this: - AMD K6-2+ can be converted to K6-3+ by moving a 0-ohm resistor under the IHS to unlock the full 256K of L2 cache only present on K6-3+ models. The CPUs were basically all the same and were binned into separate SKUs using the position of this resistor. - AMD K7 (Athlon XP) can be similarly unlocked by bridging conductive pads on the chip using something as common a gr…

Not a CPU mod because it was enabled by BIOS and motherboard but still perhaps the most legendary CPU ever for overclocking: Celeron 300A (1998). >50% was typical just by changing one setting.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#45

Post by thfuran »

lupire wrote: post #41
grandinj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to validate a new processor on an old motherboard, and no corp wants to waste money on a product they have already sold.

The new processor isn't sold yet.

Sure, but why pay to validate on old boards when you can instead get many of their users to pay you for new ones?

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#46

Post by josephcsible »

> Don’t get too excited though, as projects like Intel BootGuard are bound to hamper mods like this on newer generations by introducing digital signing for BIOS images, flying under the banner of user security yet again. Alas, it appears way more likely that Intel’s financial security is the culprit.

Indeed. The rule of thumb is that if you don't have the ability to turn off some security feature in something you own, then it's really there to make the thing secure against you.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#47

Post by l33tman »

litenboll wrote: post #39
accrual wrote: post #33

A couple of historical CPU mods similar to this: - AMD K6-2+ can be converted to K6-3+ by moving a 0-ohm resistor under the IHS to unlock the full 256K of L2 cache only present on K6-3+ models. The CPUs were basically all the same and were binned into separate SKUs using the position of this resistor. - AMD K7 (Athlon XP) can be similarly unlocked by bridging conductive pads on the chip using something as common a gr…

If anybody else wonders why a 0-ohm resistor is a thing, apparently it is because it makes it possible to install a jumper on printed circuit boards with the same equipment that is used for normal resistors. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-ohm_link

You put 0-ohms where you think you might at some point want to have something else there like a > 0 ohm resistor or an inductor (for EMI blocking for example), it's much easier to just reprogram the SMD robot than to make a new PCB.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#48

Post by candiddevmike »

accrual wrote: post #33

A couple of historical CPU mods similar to this: - AMD K6-2+ can be converted to K6-3+ by moving a 0-ohm resistor under the IHS to unlock the full 256K of L2 cache only present on K6-3+ models. The CPUs were basically all the same and were binned into separate SKUs using the position of this resistor. - AMD K7 (Athlon XP) can be similarly unlocked by bridging conductive pads on the chip using something as common a gr…

I remember the AMD unlocks using just an advanced setting in the BIOs. My cheap ass got a quad core processor for the price of a dual core!

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#49

Post by _the_inflator »

fizzynut wrote: post #38
donatj wrote: post #35

What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical. My thoughts on reasons they might have done this. I honestly have no idea, these are just uninformed guesses. - The Charitable Answer: There actually is some sort of…

Intel basically made the same CPU for about 6 years straight because of 10nm process issues. They had to keep pretending the next gen "Lake" CPU was substantially different from the last, so they just took last gen product, made some minor tweaks to break compatibility and called it a new generation

Same goes for most cars. No real revolution, tweaks or changes due to regulatory demands, but nothing groundbreaking.

Re: Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

#50

Post by zackmorris »

donatj wrote: post #35

What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical. My thoughts on reasons they might have done this. I honestly have no idea, these are just uninformed guesses. - The Charitable Answer: There actually is some sort of…

Coming of age in the 90s and witnessing the sheer audacity of greed that followed, I can tell you that the cynical answer tends to be the right one.
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