Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

Re:Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999) by snailmailman on Saturday March 13, 2021 @09:13PM (#26452157)

When I built my pc the cpu came with some free game or game coupon or something. It wasn’t in the box, I instead had to download and run some AMD software that verified that I was in fact using the CPU. I’m under the impression that it detected my specific CPU not just make/model but some sort of unique ID. Presumably this stops people from claiming the code and reselling the cpu,(or at least without reselling it as “new”) or from spinning up a VM and trying to redeem random promos without owning the real CPU.

Thought it was interesting that they did that but didn’t think much more of it. I don’t even remember what the promo was. Might have just been extended warranty or something?

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Re:Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999) by verst on Saturday March 13, 2021 @10:42PM (#26452612)

In November I activated such an AMD Promo for my Ryzen 5000X. The game I got was Far Cry 6. Hilarious because the game keeps getting delayed to now mid September or so of this year, almost a year after I bought the CPU. Not exactly the best Promo to show off the power of the CPU :)

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Re:Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999) by userbinator on Saturday March 13, 2021 @11:57PM (#26452910)

There are a lot of unique identifiers in a PC, not just on the CPU but various ones in the motherboard (BIOS) too...

from spinning up a VM

...and you can change them, even if not easily, for a VM. AFAIK the Windows licensing/activation relies on the same uniqueness.

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Re:Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999) by anthk on Sunday March 14, 2021 @07:54AM (#26454592)

Just can just run Bochs, emulate a modern AMD CPU, and with of patience, dump the game files.

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