Intel who already makes billions selling processors has moved to rake in additional revenues by artificially limiting processors so that users are forced to pay an additional $60 upgrade fee if they want the peak performance that the chip can deliver.
Consumers who buy an Intel Pentium G6951 processor and pay their $60 will be sent a Windows application that switches on hyper threading, giving them system support for up to four program threads, it also enables another 1MB of Level 3 cache.
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| Picture: Engagnet |
The controversial pilot program is currently being trialled in Canada, Spain and the Netherlands with a view to rolling the program out in Australia in the future. Among the brands working with Intel is Acer and Gateway.
Consumers who buy a product in the belief that they are getting the full power of an Intel Pentium processor will be prompted to upgrade when they boot their new PC.
In the past, Intel, AMD and other processor makers have sold full-fledged chips with reduced features only when production yields generate chips that have lose some features. Some Intel single-core processors, for example, are dual-core chips that shipped with one defective core or too little cache to drive a full set of cores.
