As detailed by the folks at Hardware.info, the cards grant you access to software that upgrades the Pentium G6951 processor. It does this by enabling the 1MB of L3 cache and HyperThread support that already exists on the chip. As others have already noted, this isn’t an entirely new practice, but that doesn’t make it anymore easy to swallow. [Hardware.info via Engadget]
Molo
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 8:29 AMScum will be scum.
Peter Simpson
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 9:22 AMWhat. The. Shit.
GreyPants
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 10:36 AMDick move.
Christian
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 12:12 PMThanks…ATI, it is about time I gave you a go again!
g
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 1:48 PMI suppose it makes some sense, but may be vulnerable to hackers. It’s just a way to have an upgradeable CPU, so you don’t have to pay for the CPU power you don’t need at the beginning. It’s certainly cheaper, easier and greener than swapping a new CPU.
Peter Simpson
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 9:23 AMBut the hardware remains fundamentally the same since purchase. It’s charging you again for what you’ve already paid for. It’s a rip off, and I sell computers.
David Anderton
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 9:16 PMIts pretty disgusting really not to mention completely unsustainable. My next build will be an AMD bulldozer
Matthew Deshon
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 8:00 AMbuy a mac
Peter Simpson
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 1:34 PMNo.
Francis Mullane
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 11:04 AMWhy the Mac uses Intel processors as well.. so you get to prop up two scummie companies in one hit ?!?