Posted on Monday, August 15 2011 @ 23:43 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Bit Tech
reports Intel has introduced software upgrades for some of its new Core i3 and Pentium G series low-end processors. By buying a scratch card, users of these chips will be able to download a tool that will unlock upgrades such as higher clockspeeds and extra cache.
Owners of the CPUs will need to purchase a scratch card equipped with a pin number, and download software which will enable the unlock. At the moment, Intel will offer the upgrades for the Core i3-2312M, Core i3-2102 and Pentium G622.
All feature locked multipliers out of the box - sadly this won't change, but applying the unlock to the Core i3-2102 will see a frequency boost from 3.1GHz to 3.6GHz and the Pentium G622 will see its default clock speed of 2.6GHz rise to 3.2GHz. The Core i3-2312M will see a 400MHz frequency boost, but will also gain 1MB cache.
Seeing as the CPUs also lack Turbo Boost, this could be a welcome upgrade, but is currently unconfirmed.
