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Comment by p1necone | Hacker News Reader

Artificial "product segmentation" is such nonsense. If you're able to put in the extra effort of disabling features that you just get for free otherwise, and make more profit by doing so that's just a sign that the market you're operating in is severely lacking in competition. It's good to finally see AMD giving Intel a run for their money.

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Eh, it's like how non-K intel processors technically can be overclocked* in that less features can mean you get the same CPU but cheaper.

*: I know there are other reasons for non-K processors (binning might actually mean your non-K CPU can't overclock), but it's largely just a way to move more product and sell at a lower price point to those who can't afford unlocked or otherwise wouldn't have overclocked.

If Intel can disable a feature and sell something at a lower price, then they could also sell the same thing at that lowered price without the feature disabled. The only reason they don't is because they exist in a patent encumbered, (very) competition light environment.

(Binning because of imperfect production yields is different though and I don't have a problem with that. It's hard to tell how much of the K/non-K split is legitimate binning, and how much is just a bool in the microcode).

Didnt stop AMD from disabling PCI Express Resizable BAR support, hidden behind AMD marketing wank "smart access memory (TM)" name, on older "chipsets" despite both memory and PCIE controllers being build INTO THE CPU ....

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/smart-access-memory

Or that time x470 was going to support PCIE 4, but then it was made x570 exclusive

Resizable BAR support was added in the latest BIOS update of my B450 motherboard (that also added Zen 3 compatibility).

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