Who didn't realize they were crippled? I'm not sure where you got that thought from in this thread. Definitely not from my posts.
Obviously you with your statement about crippling high end chips, and a lot of other people as well. What do you think a i7 970 is? A crippled 990x. You lower the 2 nothces, and disable the feature of an unlocked multipler, and bam you've got a 970, a crippled 990x. You talked about not buying them if they "started" crippling their high end chips and forcing people to pay for an upgrade. You already are doing that, or didn't you know?
Are you kidding? (obviously you're not, but come on.) Intel is not giving users an option to upgrade. They are simply sucking more money out of ignorant consumers, and you know this.
Actually, an upgrade option is exactly what this is, that isn't obvious to you? I mean they are spelling that out for you. You are the one that is assuming it is a big evil scheme rip people off. Are they doing it to make money, yes of course. However, they are taking a situation that would likely lead to no extra money for them, and turning into something that will make them money. Because the fact of that matter is, the people that they are targetting with these upgrades are people that would likely never upgrade their processor at all until they buy a new computer. So now Intel has a chance to charge them $50 for a CPU upgrade and a fair number of people will probably do it that would have never considered a CPU upgrade otherwise.
Obviously the common consumer is going to take a cheaper upgrade path instead of buying a new CPU, but that doesn't make the fact that Intel is ripping them off any better. If they actually knew how the upgrade worked they would probably be very upset. My posts were simply stating that it is wrong to cripple hardware and charge people to unlock it later.
That is just the thing though, they don't care to know how the upgrade worked. They don't care to learn how to do it themselves either. Again, it isn't ripping them off when you consider the cost to bring it into a shop to upgrade the CPU for you. Then there is also the fact that you have to buy a totally new CPU, yes you might be able to sell the old one, but not for retail, and the people targetted for this aren't technically savy so figuring out where and how to sell a CPU is another hurdle they face.
And why is it wrong to cripple it then charge to unlock it later? Because the person should just get those features for free? They bought a low end CPU, they paid less for it. If they wanted those features they should have bought the higher CPU right away. Things are cheaper for a reason. Paying less now and wanting the features later means you end up paying more in the end, but that is sometimes how life works.
It's wrong to cripple things, period. That is all.
Go complain to every major silicon manufacturer, because they all do it. AMD(CPU and GPU), nVidia, Intel they all do it.
*after thought* Yes I pay for the high end CPU's, because I want the performance level it brings. Will I pay $1000+ for my own personal CPU's? No, because the performance difference is not needed in my case. However, if the cost of manufacturing a crippled CPU is the same as the unlocked CPU, then why should they charge more for the unlocked one? It didn't cost any more to make it. In fact, it might actually cost LESS, because it doesn't go through the crippling process. I am aware that almost every CPU they put out is crippled. Just because they do it, does not make it OK. If you're not for open source everything, then you are an enemy of progress. The monetary system in general is the enemy of human progress. However, you're entitled to your own opinions.
You are right, it does cost pretty much the same to make a G620 as it does a i3-2120, it costs basically the same to make a i5 2300 as it does to make an i7 2600k. However, there are realistic reasons why an i5 2300 core wouldn't make a good i7 2600K core. Processor binning is part of the reason why we need different CPU levels. Of course, in todays day and age, the processors don't all bin as low as they are classed though. However, demand means that higher binned processors have to be used to make lower end SKUs. The fact is that the lower end SKUs sell waaaay more volume then the higher end SKUs. So for every 2600K processor sold, there are say 15 2300 processors sold. But each 2300 is only making intel say $5 while each 2600k is making Intel $135, so in the end the 2300 sales only amount to $75 in profit and the 2600K sales amount to $135. I'm just making these numbers up of course, because only the people that work and Intel know the true cost of each processor, but I'm just providing a senerio where your "sell everything super cheap" doesn't work. They they sold everything at the price of the 2300 price, they have less money for developement and progress is actually slowed.