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Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums use the same die as the corresponding Core i3s, but only the i3 supports AVX in the CPU and QuickSync in the GPU. AES instructions aren't available on the i3 but are present on the dual-core i5. Haswell no longer discriminates with QuickSync, and extends AES down to the i3s but still not the Celerons and Pentiums.

None of these features are unavailable due to being physically absent. They're just turned off. If Intel's microcode format and DRM were reverse engineered, some of the features could be turned back on.




Thanks for the great info. That was the part I couldn't figure out from the article or the specs.




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