Intel wants another 50 bucks to unlock your CPU’s hidden power

In a pricing scheme that sounds good for Intel and shady for customers, Intel’s revealed that it’s testing something where you buy a processor at X speed and then if you want it to reach it’s “true” speed, you pay Intel another $50. Sounds fucking awesome.

The idea is being tested on their low-cost Pentium G6951 processor, where a $50 upgrade will unlock an additional 1MB of L3 cache and HyperThreading support. These features are already on all versions of the chip, but remain hidden unless you cough up the extra cash. This isn’t exactly a new idea. Video game makers have been charging users for years to “download” new features and weapons, a process which simply unlocks parts of the disc you already paid for.

Yeah… but I don’t like the idea of equating video game DLC with getting cheated on hardware that you should just be buying for a price that gives you everything it’s advertised as. 

Via