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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

#91

Post by boplicity »

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…

Car buyers aren't always so dumb. When we bought our car, I was fully aware that major updates to models happen only so often. We bought used (of course), and the "major update" was our major criteria, more so than the specific year release date. (We bought a 2014 model in 2018; the year they released significant safety improvements compared to the 2013 model.)

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

#92

Post by babypuncher »

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.

Motherboard manufacturers don't seem to mind doing it for AMD chips

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

#93

Post by nine_k »

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

A "0-ohm resistor" could also be more clearly called a "conductor", but it's not, despite its electrical function.

I suppose it's because the mechanical function is more salient: it is a standard SMD part like other resistors, capacitors, LEDs, etc, not a conductor etched on the PCB.

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

#94

Post by nfriedly »

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…

Honestly, from a reliability standpoint, the ideal new car is one that had a major refresh ~2 years ago. By then most of the kinks should be worked out.

Or just pay attention to the warranty. If they guarantee it for 10 years, they probably expect it to run for 10+ years.

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

#95

Post by settsu »

_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.

This is arguably exactly what most people actually need in a vehicle that you are spending thousands of dollars on: accumulated refinements seamlessly incorporated over time.

Year over year this typically results in good outcomes on a purely practical basis. However it just inherently makes for very boring publicity/promotional material.

Edit to add: it can also admittedly result in older solutions getting baked in which prevent larger beneficial changes. (Toyota's North American 4Runner and Tacoma models might be good real world examples of this approach resulting in generally high reliability but also larger, "riskier" changes being seemingly eventually necessary.)

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

#96

Post by stordoff »

crote wrote: post #74
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.

I flashed my Radeon 9550 into a Radeon 9600 Pro. Bumping the core/memory clocks from 250/200 to 400/300 was a pretty decent upgrade, and there was still some overhead for overclocking (IIRC, I got it up to about 450MHz on the core).

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

#97

Post by jandrese »

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.

What if the reliability is like "these bearings are known to fail every 10k miles or so, but we have no product refresh planned for at least 3 years so the problem will remain unresolved?"

This is what incremental improvements are supposed to be. Well that and discovering that the vehicle can last till the end of the warranty period with one less bolt in that spot, so you can eliminate it.

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

#98

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

New models every year are fine if they're honestly labeled and have technologically reasonable compatibility.

Cars and phones meet those criteria a lot better than Intel CPUs. The problem isn't releasing things, it's the way they pretend every release is a big advance and the way they make the motherboards almost never able to upgrade.

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

#99

Post by Dylan16807 »

crote wrote: post #73
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.

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 t…

Newer doesn't usually mean more power, though. You can just have a power limit, it's fine. And I don't expect PCIe to get faster with a CPU upgrade anyway.

The flash space was pretty forseeable and they dealt with it, more of an excuse than anything.

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

#100

Post by Dylan16807 »

Laforet wrote: post #66
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 actually intended for LGA1151 to remain unchanged for Coffee Lake but found out late in the testing process that many existing motherboards did not have enough power delivery capability to support the planned 6 and 8 core parts. Hence the decision to lock them out in software only. They are probably aware of the bad optics but decided that it’s better than trying to deal with the RMAs later. It’s very similar t…

Why does a socket that can support DDR3 or DDR4 need to be different from a socket that only supports DDR3?

And with the current socket being 1700, they're going to change it again for the next generation to 1851, and with a quick look I don't see any feature changes that are motivating the change. (Upgrading 4 of the PCIe lanes to match the speed of the other 16 definitely does not count as something that motivates a socket change.)

So by my reckoning, half their desktop socket changes in the last decade have been unnecessary.

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