Blogs Intel should simplify its CPU naming policy

I run unity on my laptop along with so animation, rendering is a bitch as it is on an i7 nevermind a pentium

 

Old days were much better!

 

It'd make sense as a contributing factor at the very least. With no understanding of performance differences between PC components what's a buyer to do? You can compare models and figure out that the higher number ones are better and more expensive, but it's all relative. You know that the $100 model is slower than the $150 but not whether either will suit your needs. In such a situation a buyer defaults to the bottom line: how much do I want to spend? Figure that out, then buy something close to that price range on the assumption that it'll be the best you'll be able to get and hope what you can afford does what you need. In such a situation Apple would be an easy choice. It's a recognizable name, and it's a simple buying process.

Calling people sheep or morons for such a decision always bothers me. From the perspective of the buyer they've often done what appears to be the best choice given the information they've been provided. How many people, including PC enthusiasts who call Apple buyers "sheeple" and the like, are guilty of buying something like a flashlight, pocket knife, camera, you name it in store because it looked like a decent enough product given what you already knew (which could be nothing!) and what the available competition looked like? There's likely to be an enthusiast community for anything and they're likely to think you're a sheep or a moron for your purchase. People have different interests.

 

Yeah...no that's not what we do.

PCworld are not evil. Infact it makes no odds to me if i sell you a £250 laptop or a £1k laptop, it's the solution that's right for the customer that's important.

 

^ It's true.

When I worked there, we didn't get any commission or anything, and the markup on the machines is actually quite small. Money is made on peripherals and service plans. This means that even if you sell the most expensive piece of kit to the customer, you're still only 'box-shifting' if you don't get the printer/mouse/keyboard/coverplan on top of it.

 

Right on the money.

 

I agree that the naming scheme is ridiculous, but even more so with Ivy Bridge - no longer is it a straightforward choice between two mainstream/enthusiast CPUs whose differences were clear and logical and whose names reflected this (i5 2500K and i7 2600K)... it's now

• 3770K
• 3770
• 3770S
• 3770T
• 3570K
• 3570
• 3570S
• 3570T
• 3550
• 3550S
• 3475S
• 3470
• 3470S
• 3470T

...ad nauseum. I mean, that's just ridiculous, and that's just SOME of the desktop offerings.

And the desktop vs mobile hyperthreading categorization is likewise ridiculous.

 

Because it is insanely complex to understand that desktop model numbering is (and it was the same for Sandy Bridge as well, they had the S/T/K models as well) :
1) Prefix (model)
Celeron - single or dualcore, lowend, no HT
Pentium - dualcore, lowend, no HT
Core i3 - dualcore, HT
Core i5 - quadcore, no HT
Core i7 - quadcore, HT
2) Number inside the category, higher = better
3) Suffix (if present) :
K = unlocked for overclocking
P = IGP disabled/removed
S = a bit lower TDP (lower voltage and clocks)
T = a lot lower TDP (lower voltage and clocks)

Mobile numbering
1) prefix giving "performance" categorization:
Celeron/Pentium = dualcore, no HT
i3/i5/i7 = dualcore, HT (with exceptions)
2) Number inside the category, higher = better
3) Suffix (if present) :
Q = quadcore
T = means lower TDP.
U = means ultra low core (even lower TDP)

Sandy Bridge had the same suffixes :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)#Desktop_platform

I guess AMD numbering where all the number tells you is number of core (in case of Bulldozer AM3+ CPU) or nothing at all (FM1/FM2 CPU) is much, much better.

 

You forgot the i5-3350P version that doesn't have an IGP, not to mention that the i5-3470T has 2 cores-4 thread while the i5-3570T has 4 cores- 4 thread

 

Some of it is binning - Intel can't get a chip to spin up to the full 3.1 GHz at stock, they can't sell it as a 3770, but it'll do 2.9 stable, so it becomes a 3570 (purely an example, cba to look up what the clocks really are.)

Would it be better if they flattened it out to where it won't do 3.1, so they throw it away? i3s already start at $130 - what do you think would happen to pricing if they started throwing 3/4 of their procs in the bin?

Not that I'm defending them (nor AMD, for that matter, who do the same), but it is more than a little ridiculous that even in the Pentium line, they have at least 4 SKUs that are separated by 100 MHz each.

I've got parts coming for a partial rebuild for a friend, and it only took about 5 minutes to find a processor, but that's the result of god knows how many hours reading about Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Llano, Trinity...

What's even worse are the fliers I see for the local computer behemoth (Fry's) that now show AMD as only 'E2' or 'A8' - no clocks, no features, just an entirely meaningless number. Were it me, it would seem logical that the first character meant the most, and so the 'E' would be way better than the 'A'...no, not at all.

It is worse on the Intel side, though, with up to 4 variants of the same model with different TDPs, or in some cases the 'lower' model having better features than the 'higher', and that the way they're named/numbered is not consistent between mobile and desktop.

 

I'm about to build a new rig, and honestly, I have no idea on CPUs anymore.

I expect chips to go i3,i5 and i7, all with increasing model numbers to make it easy to understand, but I don't think it's so simple.

Not sure where I'm going to start...

 

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=3227419&postcount=48

 

This is why they had the star rating system for performance that was quite nice.

And naming isnt that bad. Could be a whole lot worse. With the amount of processors they make, it is expected that there would be some naming confusion.

 

it's really a very simple thing for those with the desire to know...
http://ark.intel.com
enter part numbers, add to compare, and compare!

 

I agree with the article completely, and the irony is that only a few years ago Intel PR officials were telling us how they were "simplifying their range" into just 4 streams: i7, i5, i3 and Pentium (effectively dumping the previous generation C2D & C2Q brands and shoving those processors into the new low-end "Pentium" stream). Haha, what went wrong and how long before we hear a similar line again?

 

Same goes for Motherboards though,
even if you manage to decide on a chipset and a brand...
Ausu for instance have 18 different Z77 MoBo's.

http://www.asus.de/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/Intel_Z77

Nope, for this much confusion, you need a Marketing Expert.
Also, we riside in an ivory tower*...

*made of concrete