Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape

hackaday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 132 posts

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

#81

Post by Zambyte »

Groxx wrote: post #80
traverseda wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> continued software support

Unfortunately due to the extremely minimal software rights that exist (see: proprietary software) this is pretty much nonexistent in cars AFAIK.

I would rather get a car that is old enough to not be limited by software constraints. Which is pretty disappointing, because I actually really like electric cars. I think they would work well for my needs. But they are all so intentionally kneecapped, I have no interest in any particular model that's available.

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

#82

Post by immibis »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #75
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 wit…

My i7-6700k was going strong until the motherboard died for the second time. I suspect a solder crack caused by issue vibration from a damaged fan (and my only evidence for that is the fact the fan is damaged and vibrates and that two different motherboards died). Might try reflowing it to revive it, eventually.

After reviewing my options I would have either bought a third motherboard or upgraded to something like a Threadripper (I did the latter). Upgrading to a current desktop Intel system just didn't seem really worth it when I already had most of a working one and it was still fast enough.

You actually have FEWER expansion slots on the newer desktop motherboards because they've pre-decided what you want: a desktop has a 16x GPU slot and a 4x NVMe slot, and that's it. Gone are the days of generic uncommitted expansion slots, mostly.

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

#84

Post by pwg »

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…

> What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this?

They (Intel) also make the chipsets that go on the motherboards. So anyone who disposes of their old motherboard and buys a new motherboard because of this limitation results in:

   1) new CPU sale to Intel
   2) new chipset sale to Intel (indirect sale via the motherboard manufacturer)
Given that a "new CPU" sale plus a "new motherboard chipset" sale is more revenue to Intel than just a "new CPU" sale alone the financial benefit becomes obvious.

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

#85

Post by immibis »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #69

Anti-upgrade is disgusting. Upgradeability is a major reason to buy an tower PC. I would love to pay any remotely-reasonable amount of money for a motherboard which would let me just swap CPUs and cards for 15 years. This is what good motherboards were in the good old pre-PCIe days. It was so lovely to buy the best MB + cheapest everything else, then upgrade whatever as you need and can afford it. I've read Intel eve…

One reason I chose to buy the lowest-end Threadripper instead of the highest end Ryzen. In the future, even if there's never any compatibility with socket sTR5, the parts in the same generation provide a part-by-part upgrade path up to 96 cores, 1TB of RAM (or was it 2TB? I forget), and 128 PCIe lanes.

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

#86

Post by BobaFloutist »

_the_inflator wrote: post #49
fizzynut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean I can't speak to ICE cars, but electric cars ranges seem to scale pretty dramatically with how new they are.

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

#87

Post by yellow_postit »

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…

Buying first gen models is always a crapshoot. Often same for last gen if they try to squeeze new capabilities into a platform it wasn’t intended for.

Tesla is particularly terrible but this has been true for every manufacturer.

You want a couple years for them to work out the kinks.

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

#88

Post by wmf »

vel0city wrote: post #65
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.

It costs money to validate a new processor on an older motherboard design. How much does it cost to make a completely new motherboard design ?

They're going to make new motherboards every year regardless, so any support for old motherboards is in addition to that.

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

#89

Post by 4gotunameagain »

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

It can serve multiple purposes. You can have 0 ohm resistors to serve as a bridge to run a trace below if you're running out of space.

You can have multiple resistor footprints and depending on where the 0 ohm is placed, different configurations are enabled.

You can use it to be able to isolate parts of the circuit after the fact, although solder jumpers are more common for that purpose

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

#90

Post by micv »

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.

> Actually it was the Ati Radeon 9500 non pro that could be modded into a Radeon 9700.

Sometimes. At least some of those 9500s were binned parts that showed their broken bits when you modded them. I had one. The screen turned into a kaleidoscope when I tried to play a game.

Was definitely worth a try if you had one though!

Post reply on HN