Would you pay to give your PC's hardware a little boost? Intel's certainly hoping you will, as it's currently piloting an upgrade program that will unlock features on the CPU you already own.
At the moment, the scheme only applies to Pentium G6591 processors paired with one of the company's own H55-based motherboards. For $50 (around £39), a user - or reseller, or system builder - can unlock the full 1MB L3 cache and HyperThreading support by entering a code into an upgrade application. While it won't give a huge performance-boost, enabling these features should make the dual-core CPU quite a bit snappier.
Obviously, the process of selling hardware-locked processors as cheaper models is pretty common from both Intel and AMD. However, it's rare that these are fully working chips, and practically unheard of that the features can be enabled by paying a little extra.
It's certainly an interesting proposition, and time will tell if the chip-builder will extend the programme to any of its other CPUs. We're also curious to see if intrepid hackers will manage to perform the upgrade without purchasing Intel's official codes. The fact that the upgrade is based in software may help, though the company has undoubtedly developed numerous security measures.
The scheme is currently running for a limited period and applies to select customers in the US, Canada, Spain and the Netherlands while Intel assesses its success. However, the original question stands - would you pay for an incremental CPU upgrade after purchasing a system?
