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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

#71

Post by Moto7451 »

ielillo wrote: post #53
terlisimo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honorable mention of ATI Radeon 9600 that was soft-upgradeable (via hacked drivers) to 9800 PRO for a 200% perf boost. Good times.

Actually it was the Ati Radeon 9500 non pro that could be modded into a Radeon 9700. Regarding the ATI Radeon 9600, there was a variant called Radeon 9550 that could be overclocked from 250 mhz to 400 mhz.

And my personal favorite, the Radeon 9100 which was actually a Radeon 8500 in PCI format instead of AGP. With a slightly tweaked 8500 Mac Edition bios you would have a very fast GPU for first gen PCI Macs through the Yikes G4. I believe some faster NVidia PCI cards ended up appearing and being made to run on Macs but I had moved from my XPostfacto PCI Macs to an Intel mini by then.

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

#72

Post by II2II »

Qem wrote: post #43
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 no…

If you're going to bring in RISC-V, why not mention ARM? They're currently more of a threat to Intel than RISC-V and likely will be over the next decade. They have a near monopoly for anything that is not a computer that requires anything more than a low performance microcontroller, and are supported to varying degrees by the three major general purpose operating systems.

RISC-V likely has a promising future, but the foundations are still being laid.

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

#73

Post by crote »

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.

AMD ran into significant compatibility issues with AM4, with some motherboards not being able to supply the amount of power needed by the newer CPUs and PCI-E Gen 4 support being removed in the final BIOS release due to reliability issues. A lot of motherboards also didn't have enough flash space to contain the firmware needed for the whole CPU range, so the update to support the newer gen had to remove support for the oldest gen.

Turns out it's really hard to guarantee compatibility with several years of third-party products which weren't designed with your new fancy features in mind.

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

#74

Post by crote »

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 upgrading my ATI Radeon HD 6950 to a 6970 - it was just a simple firmware flash! Worked beautifully. The card did eventually die so it might not have been the best idea, but in the meantime it did mine enough Bitcoins to pay for itself.

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

#75

Post by fennecfoxy »

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…

To be fair I don't upgrade PC all that often (my 1080ti still going strooong!)

So when I do upgrade (every 6 years or so, it's currently been since 2018 and I still feel no need) then not only does the CPU technology need a bump, but the bridges on the mobo also need an update. Going from a 2018->2024 mobo is guaranteed to get you things like more/faster m.2 slots etc as well.

I suppose they could make compatible with old and new boards but I imagine it's much easier for them to design 1:1 new cpu + chipset than to design and test 1:* new cpu, new chipset, old chipset 1, old chipset 2, etc.

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

#76

Post by laweijfmvo »

scrlk wrote: post #2

Reminds me of the "pencil trick" to overclock CPUs in the late 90s/early 00s. You'd rub a pencil over contacts on the CPU to bridge them, which would unlock the clock multiplier.

and the initial "fix" from AMD to stop it was to laser burn a trough between the contacts, so that you couldn't draw a line between them!

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

#77

Post by xattt »

jeffhuys wrote: post #55
_the_inflator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still, when you’re due for a new car and look for the newest of the newest, would you go with manufacturer A, who released their latest car 8 years ago, or manufacturer B, who released it 1 year ago? Incremental upgrades get so much hate around the internet (mostly about phones) by people having the version before it. Saying things like “ah they changed almost nothing! Why would I upgrade?!” While for instance me, on…

Case in point: A new car released 8 years ago, but with incremental upgrades (i.e. Mitsubishi RVR in NA), still won’t have the same fundamental design considerations around safety or fuel efficiency as a more recent model.

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

#78

Post by someguydave »

lazide wrote: post #58
_the_inflator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Luckily it’s not common to need to replace your garage every time you get a new car.

In this analogy, Intel sells the parts to make garages too

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

#79

Post by traverseda »

jeffhuys wrote: post #55
_the_inflator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still, when you’re due for a new car and look for the newest of the newest, would you go with manufacturer A, who released their latest car 8 years ago, or manufacturer B, who released it 1 year ago? Incremental upgrades get so much hate around the internet (mostly about phones) by people having the version before it. Saying things like “ah they changed almost nothing! Why would I upgrade?!” While for instance me, on…

The one with a reliability data for the past 8 years.

It's surprising to me that people would want to make a major financial decision like a car without knowing about its reliability history.

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

#80

Post by Groxx »

traverseda wrote: post #79
jeffhuys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, when you’re due for a new car and look for the newest of the newest, would you go with manufacturer A, who released their latest car 8 years ago, or manufacturer B, who released it 1 year ago? Incremental upgrades get so much hate around the internet (mostly about phones) by people having the version before it. Saying things like “ah they changed almost nothing! Why would I upgrade?!” While for instance me, on…

The one with a reliability data for the past 8 years. It's surprising to me that people would want to make a major financial decision like a car without knowing about its reliability history.

8 years of the same parts, repair knowledge, and continued software support?

Sign me up immediately.

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