[HN Gopher] Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape
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Intel's anti-upgrade tricks defeated with Kapton tape
Author : sharpshadow
Score : 253 points
Date : 2024-05-31 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackaday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
| scrlk wrote:
| Reminds me of the "pencil trick" to overclock CPUs in the late
| 90s/early 00s. You'd rub a pencil over contacts on the CPU to
| bridge them, which would unlock the clock multiplier.
| wrigby wrote:
| I remember this being the way to unlock Athlon XP's (though if
| you bought the mobile version, which used the same socket and
| ran just fine in a desktop motherboard, they came unlocked from
| the factory).
| jsheard wrote:
| You rarely see those kinds of unlocks anymore unfortunately,
| since they started using eFuses to disable parts of the chip
| permanently. It still happens occasionally though, like the
| time when AMD decided to add a 4GB SKU alongside the originally
| planned 8GB SKU of one of their graphics cards so late in
| development that they didn't have time to actually change the
| hardware, so all of the initial batches had 8GB installed with
| half of it disabled in the VBIOS where applicable, which was
| easy to reverse by flashing the VBIOS from the 8GB version.
|
| The one time in history when "download more RAM" wasn't just a
| meme.
| terlisimo wrote:
| Honorable mention of ATI Radeon 9600 that was soft-
| upgradeable (via hacked drivers) to 9800 PRO for a 200% perf
| boost. Good times.
| iwontberude wrote:
| And NVidia GeForce 6600GS to 6800GT with pencil mod and
| flash.
| ielillo wrote:
| 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.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| And my personal favorite, the Radeon 9100 which was
| actually a Radeon 8500 in PCI format instead of AGP. With
| a slightly tweaked 8500 Mac Edition bios you would have a
| very fast GPU for first gen PCI Macs through the Yikes
| G4. I believe some faster NVidia PCI cards ended up
| appearing and being made to run on Macs but I had moved
| from my XPostfacto PCI Macs to an Intel mini by then.
| micv wrote:
| > 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!
| Astronaut3315 wrote:
| Wow, that's even better than my old PNY GTX 465. It was
| really a 470 that was cut down by the VBIOS. I was able to
| download 256MB of VRAM, a wider memory bus and some GPU cores
| on that one.
| lithos wrote:
| IBM servers this was the default as well. Where the
| difference between ram amounts on AS400 systems was a phone
| call to enable more.
| jsheard wrote:
| Having dormant hardware which is _intended_ to be
| unlockable later is a separate thing, which is rarely seen
| on consumer hardware. Intel tried it a while ago but the
| backlash was so severe that they gave up and reverted to
| permanently fusing off the silicon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service
|
| I believe they still have something similar which allows
| Xeon processors to be upgraded in the field though. Car
| manufacturers have been testing the waters too, e.g.
| installing heated seats in every model and making them a
| paid software unlock for lower end models that didn't have
| that option enabled from the factory.
| hinkley wrote:
| IBM's problem was going to be inventory, labor, scheduling,
| and transportation costs.
|
| Your mainframe is slow and IBM is going to charge you 6
| hours of labor to come out for 90 minutes next Friday, or
| we can deal with it over the phone.
|
| I can't recall but did IBM use that extra hardware for
| physical redundancy in case of hardware failures? I know
| they researched letting equipment die and coming out and
| replacing it after multiple failures instead of single
| ones, but I don't know if they applied that to shipping
| mainframes, to regular rackmount hardware, or just in
| Research.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Taking me back to the Athlon XP Barton days
| benreesman wrote:
| Likewise the felt marker on DVDs during the DRM Wars.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| They do just that at the end of the embedded video.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| and the initial "fix" from AMD to stop it was to laser burn a
| trough between the contacts, so that you couldn't draw a line
| between them!
| sokoloff wrote:
| This is dated 2024, but is talking about Intel 8th gen chips
| released in 2017.
| causality0 wrote:
| And? Submissions talking about the architecture of the Game Boy
| don't need to be tagged 1989.
| jsheard wrote:
| Mentioning the Game Boy would date it implicitly, they don't
| make Game Boys anymore. Intel is still around.
| a1o wrote:
| "they" Nintendo doesn't. But "they" random people from the
| internet make FPGA motherboard of Gameboy that is
| compatible with factory buttons, case and accessories.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| The hackaday post is from this year, and talks about forum
| threads/guides from 2019. I would guess the author only learned
| about it or decided to write about it now.
|
| Even if it's not that useful to people nowadays, it's
| interesting to learn such a thing is possible.
| xxs wrote:
| >threads/guides from 2019.
|
| 2018, April
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sounds like good* strategy by Intel. Cheap for them & the MB
| manufacturers to make a few little changes, all the potential
| issues with Old MB/New CPU systems are now "sorry, not
| supported", and the Rebel 0.01% can imagine that they've cleverly
| won a real victory - which "victory" will barely be a rounding
| error on any of the Big Players' financials.
|
| *"Good" by Capitalist Overlord standards
| yourusername wrote:
| But if i can buy a new CPU for my motherboard i would be almost
| guaranteed to stay with Intel. Now ever upgrade is a chance to
| jump ship to the competition. There are probably people on
| their 3rd AM4 CPU with the same motherboard.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Intel only doing one upgrade per compatible mobo is kind of
| annoying. I had to buy and return a 6000 series CPU just to
| update my board's firmware so I could use the 7700k I
| intended to. How's the compatibility on the AMD side? Will a
| board work enough to upgrade itself with a newer CPU than it
| launched with?
| daneel_w wrote:
| I had no problems upgrading from a quad-core Zen 2 to a
| hexa-core Zen 3 on my particular motherboard (Gigabyte
| A520M H).
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| If the board supports headless USB bios updates, yes. Those
| can update the bios without a cpu present.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| When the Ryzen 3xxx series CPUs came out, some motherboards
| had the same situation. Some computer stores were
| anecdotally lending out 2xxx series Ryzen CPUs so you could
| update your BIOS
| toast0 wrote:
| Last time it was a major problem, AMD had a program to send
| you a low end old generation processor and you'd send it
| back when you were done. CPUless flashing is pretty common
| now though, and inventory is low, so there's less stale
| bios motherboards out there.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| It is a way to guarantee MB vendors a steady recurring revenue,
| thus making it a good business to build mobos for you.
|
| AMD supports upgrades for longer, which is nice but presumably
| doesn't do them any favours in the OEM relationship game.
|
| Luckily, as a customer you have a choice.
| xxs wrote:
| >Rebel 0.01%
|
| Lower than that, much lower - as it required custom
| built/assembled BIOS, effectively. The hardware mod was the
| very easy part.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I followed a guide to mod my bios (amd tho) to unlock
| features and with a tutorial is kinda easy... like, just
| follow the tutorial, open this, change this to that... i
| don't know however whether it would require a handmade mod
| for each bios or if a generalist tutorial would be okay for
| different oems mobos
| graphe wrote:
| https://www.overclock.net/threads/mod-lga775-support-for-lga... I
| did this mod back in the day, can't believe it's been 11 years.
| daneel_w wrote:
| I was myself once, before switching to AMD, a user of the related
| trick where one could run a used $35 quad-core Xeon on e.g. a
| Core 2 mobo by just switching two pins on the CPU's pin grid with
| a little sticker. Miles better experience than the $400 Core 2
| Quad.
| irisgrunn wrote:
| Similar to how you can use a socket 771 Xeon in a socket 775
| mainboard with changing a few pins and mod the bios.
| helf wrote:
| I still have a system running a modded xeon in a 775 board lol
| dghughes wrote:
| This reminds me of the olden days (1990s) when people would fill
| in laser cuts on hobbled CPUs with solder to boost...something.
| I'm old so l forget.
| userbinator wrote:
| It's interesting how the pins differ between motherboard
| manufacturers, which suggests they didn't copy Intel's reference
| schematics completely or used different revisions of them.
|
| They used to publish the reference schematics on their site up
| until the P4 era, but I guess it made things like this too easy.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| If your system isn't unstable enough... I'm sure you could drop a
| Ford V8 into a Hyundai with a few simple mods; it doesn't make it
| an intelligent idea either. But boy would it generate clicks.
| xxs wrote:
| It's an old topic[0], the site does reference it. Back then it
| was widely discussed in the overclock community. Effectively
| Intel's [6-10] series are all skylake. Shorting the cpu pins
| (well LGA) was possible even with a pencil's graphite.
|
| [0]: https://community.hwbot.org/topic/175489-asrock-z170-mocf-
| li...
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| not saying this contributed significantly to Intels recent $7
| billion loss in chip making, just that they probably shouldnt be
| pushing buyers away quite so hard given their current situation.
| xxs wrote:
| coffee lake was the 1st time Intel had to wake up and put more
| than 4 cores in a (consumer) CPU; so it was a big thing.
| aranchelk wrote:
| It's called "Coffee Mod"? I would have gone with "Kapton Lake".
| accrual wrote:
| 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 graphite
| pencil.
|
| - Intel Pentium 3 Coppermine chips could be run on earlier
| Pentium 2 boards by using a slotket adapter with a modified
| socket. The socket could sometimes be further modified to support
| the signaling used by even later P3 Tualatin chips, allowing for
| Tualatin CPUs to run on 440BX chipsets which were never designed
| for them. Also needs a BIOS mod and sometimes a VRM replacement.
| litenboll wrote:
| 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
| l33tman wrote:
| You put 0-ohms where you think you might at some point want
| to have something else there like a > 0 ohm resistor or an
| inductor (for EMI blocking for example), it's much easier to
| just reprogram the SMD robot than to make a new PCB.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| That's accurate, but given the lack of words to the effect
| of "You can also put", it deserves the clarification that
| the most common something else is - as the parent suggested
| - a [?]-ohm resistor, either as a specific component or
| more commonly in the form of the absense of a component.
| lazide wrote:
| Resistor shaped wires are also a lot less dangerous than fuse
| shaped ones. In my experience.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| 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
| nine_k wrote:
| 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.
| mrandish wrote:
| Not a CPU mod because it was enabled by BIOS and motherboard
| but still perhaps the most legendary CPU ever for overclocking:
| Celeron 300A (1998). >50% was typical just by changing one
| setting.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I remember the AMD unlocks using just an advanced setting in
| the BIOs. My cheap ass got a quad core processor for the price
| of a dual core!
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| stordoff wrote:
| 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).
| donatj wrote:
| 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 minor
| incompatibility like a voltage difference to some pin where it
| can still boot but it's maybe not good for the CPU?
|
| - The Practical Answer: They make more off the associated
| sockets/compass direction bridges/etc than they would off
| increased numbers of CPU upgrades.
|
| - The Cynical Answer: Motherboard manufacturers paid them off
|
| - The Cynical Practical Answer: They have a schedule for socket
| changes as some sort of deal with motherboard manufacturers and
| some engineers decided to do so in the laziest way possible
|
| - The Silly Answer: They're an evil corporation and want you to
| suffer
| grandinj wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| The new processor isn't sold yet.
| thfuran wrote:
| Sure, but why pay to validate on old boards when you can
| instead get many of their users to pay you for new ones?
| gregmac wrote:
| This is my thought, too.
|
| I'd bet customer perception is also a factor; there's a risk
| the old boards (not even made by Intel) die and cause
| problems, and Intel wouldn't want to deal with press/comments
| like "This CPU stopped working after 2 months" or "I
| installed this new CPU, and within 2 months it killed my
| motherboard that had been working fine for 7 years".
|
| They've released CPU upgrades with the same socket before,
| I'm sure they have the sales data to know how that performs
| vs new socket.
|
| Laptops have outsold desktops for well over a decade, and
| their CPUs pretty much non-upgradable. I can't easily find a
| nice chart to reference, but intuition tells me the desktop
| industry is similarly trending towards complete "system"
| sales vs individual parts. In other words: Most people don't
| upgrade their CPU, they upgrade by replacing the entire
| system. If true, this also means the socket would be almost
| entirely irrelevant to sales performance.
| vel0city wrote:
| 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_?
| wmf wrote:
| They're going to make new motherboards every year
| regardless, so any support for old motherboards is in
| addition to that.
| crote wrote:
| 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 the
| oldest gen.
|
| Turns out it's _really hard_ to guarantee compatibility with
| several years of third-party products which weren 't designed
| with your new fancy features in mind.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 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.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Motherboard manufacturers don't seem to mind doing it for AMD
| chips
| fizzynut wrote:
| 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
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Same goes for most cars. No real revolution, tweaks or
| changes due to regulatory demands, but nothing
| groundbreaking.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| 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, only on my 3rd
| smartphone EVER, would love all the incremental updates
| over the years when I finally decide I need a new one,
| because I always get the latest and greatest. If a company
| then doesn't release anything for a few years, I'd go
| somewhere else.
| graemep wrote:
| In the case of cars and CPUs its not that people mind
| incremental upgrades, it is that they mind incremental
| upgrades sold as big upgrades.
|
| For phones the mindset of people who upgrade when they
| have to and/or buy cheaper phones is very different from
| those who regularly upgrade to the latest flagship phone.
| xattt wrote:
| Case in point: A new car released 8 years ago, but with
| incremental upgrades (i.e. Mitsubishi RVR in NA), still
| won't have the same fundamental design considerations
| around safety or fuel efficiency as a more recent model.
| traverseda wrote:
| 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.
| Groxx wrote:
| 8 years of the same parts, repair knowledge, and
| continued software support?
|
| Sign me up immediately.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > 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.
| nehal3m wrote:
| I would love a super bare bones electric car. One that
| functions the same as any late 90s/early 2000s era car
| would, except with an electric power train and maybe
| cruise control.
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> It 's surprising to me that people would want to make
| a major financial decision like a car without knowing
| about its reliability history._
|
| Some people will always be surprising, but it is pretty
| clear that the pickup truck is the most purchased type of
| vehicle (in North America) exactly because they have a
| much better reliability track record as compared to most
| cars. This idea doesn't escape the typical buyer.
| tyre wrote:
| > it is pretty clear that the pickup truck is the most
| purchased type of vehicle (in North America) exactly
| because they have a much better reliability track record
| as compared to most cars
|
| The pickup truck is also deeply engrained in American
| culture as masculine, even if the owner does nothing that
| requires it.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| 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.
| boplicity wrote:
| 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.)
| nfriedly wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 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.
| ars wrote:
| For sure A. I would never buy a car that is the first
| model year of a revamp. I would give them at least a year
| to work out the bugs.
| lazide wrote:
| Luckily it's not common to need to replace your garage
| every time you get a new car.
| someguydave wrote:
| In this analogy, Intel sells the parts to make garages
| too
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I mean I can't speak to ICE cars, but electric cars ranges
| seem to scale pretty dramatically with how new they are.
| 4jertdhf wrote:
| There hasn't been significant combustion engine
| efficiency changes in a long time. My scrapbox from 2007
| still goes 550 miles on a tank of diesel, about the same
| as my 1997 car did before it.
| settsu wrote:
| 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.)
| Qem wrote:
| > 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.
|
| x86 market is a near monopolistic one, with two companies
| cornering most of the market. Monopolies can afford to sustain
| irrational/inefficient practices as long it helps to squeeze
| the consumer. I hope RISC-V succeeds in breaking this duopoly.
| Perhaps now with the latest round of sanctions against China,
| if their full industrial might is thrown behind open designs,
| we may have some hope to crash the duopoly.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you're hoping RISC-V will get market share then it's three
| companies, not two. Intel, AMD, and Apple.
| II2II wrote:
| If you're going to bring in RISC-V, why not mention ARM?
| They're currently more of a threat to Intel than RISC-V and
| likely will be over the next decade. They have a near
| monopoly for anything that is not a computer that requires
| anything more than a low performance microcontroller, and are
| supported to varying degrees by the three major general
| purpose operating systems.
|
| RISC-V likely has a promising future, but the foundations are
| still being laid.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Coming of age in the 90s and witnessing the sheer audacity of
| greed that followed, I can tell you that the cynical answer
| tends to be the right one.
| hinkley wrote:
| Especially considering Intel came of age in the 90's as well.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I would say that Intel is a company, not a person, and isn't
| motivated but directed. If the same _people_ own both Intel and
| the mobo manufacturers, they win by forcing new purchases of
| new products primarily distinguished by a higher price.
|
| One computer owner in a thousand upgrades their processor
| alone, or would even know how to.
| Arelius wrote:
| > I would say that Intel is a company ... and isn't motivated
| but directed
|
| You know, it's a matter of perspective, but I'd disagree.
|
| I think we'd like to think companies are directed, but I
| think as they get larger and older, especially public
| companies, they operate less by difection, and the systemic
| forces take over, and they operate and function more by the
| aggregate sum of all the motivations of the actors involved.
|
| I think it's true that some companies do exist, perhaps by
| sheer force of personality of their leaders, that remain
| primarily "directed" but feel that's more the exception than
| the rule.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| Intel sells the chipset that goes along with the processor, as
| well as selling their own motherboards. I think the profit
| incentive here is obvious.
|
| Why sell _just_ a CPU when you can sell a CPU and a chipset and
| a motherboard?
| kube-system wrote:
| Intel stopped selling motherboards in 2013.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I am going to use this listing in my pre-prompt
| Laforet wrote:
| 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 to what had happened in 2006 when the 65nm
| Core 2 series were released in the same LGA775 package used by
| 90nm Pentium 4s, however the former mandated a specific VRM
| standard that not all comtemporary motherboards supported.
| Later 45nm parts pretty much required a new motherboard despite
| having the same socket again due to power supply issues.
|
| AMD went the other route when they first introduced their 12
| and 16 core parts to the AM4 socket. A lot of older
| motherboards were clearly struggling to cope with the power
| draw but AMD got to keep their implicit promise of all-round
| compatibility. Later on AMD tried to silently drop support for
| older motherboards when the Ryzen 5000 series were introduced
| but had to back down after some backlash. Unlike the blue brand
| they could not afford to offend the fanboys.
|
| P.S. Despite the usual complaints, most previous Intel socket
| changes actually had valid technical reasons for them:
|
| - LGA1155: Major change to integrated GPU, also fixed the weird
| pin assignment of LGA1156 which made board layout a major pain.
|
| - LGA1150: Introduction of on-die voltage regulation (FIVR)
|
| - LGA1151: Initial support for DDR4 and separate clock domains
|
| This leaves the LGA1200 as the only example where there really
| isn't any justification for its existence.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Thank you for providing valuable insight. I wish these kinds
| of comments would end up at the top instead of the usual low
| quality _" hurr-$COMPANY evil, it's all because greedy
| obsolescence-durr"_, from people who have no idea how CPUs
| and motherboards work together and the compatibility
| challenges that come when spining new CPUs designs with big
| difference that aren't visible to the layman who just counts
| the number of cores and thinks there can't possibly be more
| under the hood changes beyond their $DAYJOB comprehension.
|
| Here's a video from gamer's Nexus on AMD's HW testing lab,
| just to understand the depth and breadth of how much HW and
| compatibility testing goes into a new CPU, and that's only
| what they can talk about in public.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H4eg2jOvVw
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 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.
| qball wrote:
| Because DDR4 is electrically different and memory
| controllers are all on-die.
|
| Intel could get away with doing that pre-Nehalem because
| the memory was connected via the northbridge and not
| directly (which is what AMD was doing at the time; their
| CPUs outperformed Intel's partially due to that), so the
| CPU could be memory-agnostic.
|
| AMD would later need to switch to a new socket to run DDR3
| RAM, but that socket was physically compatible with AM2
| (AM3 CPUs would have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers
| and switch depending on which memory they were paired with;
| AM3+ CPUs would do away with that though).
|
| There were some benefits to doing that; the last time Intel
| realized them was in 2001 when RD-RAM turned out to be a
| dead-end. Socket 423 processors would ultimately prove
| compatible with RDRAM, SDRAM, and DDR SDRAM.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Because DDR4 is electrically different and memory
| controllers are all on-die.
|
| Them being on-die is exactly why you _don 't_ need a
| socket change to take full advantage of DDR4, since they
| directly showed a socket can support both at once. Unless
| you're particularly worried about people trying to buy a
| new motherboard for their existing CPU, but who does
| that? You can tell them no without blocking CPU upgrades
| for everyone else.
|
| > pre-Nehalem
|
| > AM3 CPUs would have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory
| controllers
|
| LGA1151 supported both DDR3 and DDR4.
| qball wrote:
| > LGA1155: Major change to integrated GPU, also fixed the
| weird pin assignment of LGA1156 which made board layout a
| major pain.
|
| Of course, the P67 chipset was trivially electrically
| compatible with LGA1156 CPUs; Asrock's P67 Transformer
| motherboard proved that conclusively.
|
| That said, the main problem with 1155 was their locking down
| the clock dividers, so the BCLK overclocking you could do
| with 1156 platforms was completely removed (even though every
| chip in the Sandy Bridge lineup could do 4.4GHz without any
| problem). This was the beginning of the "we're intentionally
| limiting our processor performance due to zero competition"
| days.
|
| > LGA1150: Introduction of on-die voltage regulation (FIVR)
|
| Which they would proceed to remove from the die in later
| generations, if I recall correctly. (And yes, Haswell was a
| generation with ~0% IPC uplift so no big loss there, but
| still.)
| Laforet wrote:
| > P67 chipset was trivially electrically compatible with
| LGA1156 CPUs
|
| Well it's possible to shoehorn in support for the
| determined but iGPU support is definitely out of reach and
| I am not sure what segment of the market is that targeted
| to. Seems like an excuse for AsRock to get rid of their
| excess stock. The socket change was actually very well
| received by everybody in the industry.
|
| > Haswell was a generation with ~0% IPC uplift so no big
| loss there
|
| You are right that FIVR did not last long in that
| particular iteration. However Haswell does have a 10% to
| 30% IPC advantage over the previous gen depending on the
| test[1].
|
| Haswell also added AVX2 instructions which means that it
| will still _run_ the latest games whereas anything older is
| up to the whims of the developer (and sometimes denuvo,
| sadly)
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-
| review-670...
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| 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 with old and new boards
| but I imagine it's much easier for them to design 1:1 new cpu +
| chipset than to design and test 1:* new cpu, new chipset, old
| chipset 1, old chipset 2, etc.
| immibis wrote:
| 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.
| pwg wrote:
| > 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.
| godelski wrote:
| Not to mention that they know people have to upgrade, and in
| not that long of a time (5 years-ish?).
|
| The strategy doesn't work if it was something like a car
| where the lifespan is 20+ years, but with high turnover they
| have people over a barrel. Now AMD competes, but I think we
| forget that this is a new thing (and likely because if you're
| on HN, you're deep in this environment). So the big question
| is: will Intel continue, or will they recognize that they
| don't have the choice anymore. That is, of course, as long as
| AMD decides to not play the same game.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Don't get too excited though, as projects like Intel BootGuard
| are bound to hamper mods like this on newer generations by
| introducing digital signing for BIOS images, flying under the
| banner of user security yet again. Alas, it appears way more
| likely that Intel's financial security is the culprit.
|
| Indeed. The rule of thumb is that if you don't have the ability
| to turn off some security feature in something you own, then it's
| really there to make the thing secure against you.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Don't get too excited though, as projects like Intel BootGuard
| are bound to hamper mods like this on newer generations by
| introducing digital signing for BIOS images, flying under the
| banner of user security yet again. Alas, it appears way more
| likely that Intel's financial security is the culprit.
|
| It's okay, soon we'll lock down all software too in the name of
| security.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| 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 even used to make "overdrive"
| CPUs to fit really completely new generations into old sockets.
| immibis wrote:
| 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.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I would prefer 4 really powerful cores to 96 weaker cores in
| a CPU though.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| That's going to certainly depend a lot on the tasks you do.
|
| An embarrassingly parallel task would work better in the
| weak 96 cores than 4 strong cores unless those strong cores
| were literally 24 times more powerful, or if pegging 96
| cores causes RAM to be a significant bottleneck.
| peepeepoopoo74 wrote:
| Ah yes, I am reminded of the age-old internet proverb: "A socket
| change a year keeps the goyim in fear."
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| The worst intel did is fusing off AVX512 in Alder Lake. It is the
| _ONLY_ consumer grade CPU family with hardware AVX512 FP16
| support. Fantastic instruction set for machine learning.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Contrasting this to AMD's high degree of CPU support on even
| old Ryzen motherboards, it's as if Intel introduced this
| incompatibility intentionally.
|
| That is because they introduced it intentionally.
|
| They don't give a rat's ass about how this screws people over and
| creates e-waste. Pencil pushers at Intel just couldn't figure out
| how to put consumer goodwill on a balance sheet.
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