Monday, June 25, 2001		On Hardware

Intel cancels dealers’ licence
Jasjot Singh Narula

INTEL raids on the premises of Intel Genuine Dealers (GiDs) in Chandigarh caught a few of them on the wrong foot. The raid, jointly conducted by Intel and an undisclosed agency, yielded remarked chips from the premises of at least one Panchkula and two Chandigarh-based dealers.

The licences of these dealers were cancelled as some of the GiDs were using the open CPUs either from the grey market or were remarking them.

The issue of remarked CPU was of concern to the company and the users alike in the recent past. The market was flooded with open or remarked Intel processors, which were in the range of 733 Mhz, 866 Mhz and 933 Mhz. These were primarily being sourced from across the Nepal border, according to market watchers.

The open processors used to cost Rs 2000 less than the box pack CPUs and had almost no warranty. Using them was not only illegal but also amounted to playing with customer’s faith. Naturally the credibility of the company suffered.

Golden pins at the base of the processor are evaluated for processing. By removing or disabling one of these pins, 733 Mhz CPU speed can be increased to 966 Mhz. Similarly 650 Mhz CPU can be altered to perform like 850 Mhz. This enhances the BUS speed of the CPU from 100 Mhz to 133 Mhz. This way clock speed can be altered.

Intel provides box-pack CPUs to the customers with the batch number and the number printed on the box with three years of limited warranty.

Almost all chips can be over clocked since they are capable of higher speeds than those marked on them. This is, however, often at the cost of reliability and it is for this very reason that manufacturers’ like Intel mark the chips at the highest reliable speed. Thus, customers who purchased the open Intel CPU complained of frequent crashes and other performance problems.

Anuj Syal, a Chandigarh-based representative of Intel Asia, admits that the practice was on remark 733 MHz to 933 MHz at a few of the outlets and feels that these raids would send the right message across. "We have discontinued some of our channel partners in Chandigarh and have warned some of our Ludhiana-based dealers allegedly indulging in such practice," he says.