I disagree completely. The product as sold wasn't compliant with its own technical spec sheet - now after the update it is. The feature isn't supported by that

I disagree completely. The product as sold wasn't compliant with its own technical spec sheet - now after the update it is. The feature isn't supported by that CPU and it should have never been exposed to the consumer. If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. It just makes the product exactly as specified in its technical documentation - and that is how it should be. Let me play a devil's advocate here - what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while? AVX instructions always generate a tonne of heat. Maybe that's the reason why it was meant to be unsupported in the first place. Should Intel be allowed to fix the CPU and bring it in line with spec, or is that "making the product less useful"? Edit: also - Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update. If you want to keep it with AVX instructions available, at the cost of disabling all efficiency cores - sure, keep it that way.