There are two things for this situation<p><pre><code>  -On one hand Intel is disabling a &quot;Feature&quot; of their cpus
   as a way of preventing users to get &quot;More expensive 
   performance&quot; without paying for it; you can think of it
   like intel is just covering their back; we can assume the
   difference on their cpus is just related to binning [0]
   and they are just protecting their customers by not 
   allowing less performant cpus perform better therefore 
   increasing reliability.
  -on the other hand you can see how hardware is not
   anymore something you buy and expect to behave in a
   certain way.
   For those paranoid... would this mean they can also alter
   how instructions behave? **cough**security**cough**
</code></pre>
[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Product_binning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Product_binning</a>