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Intel Names Upcoming Chips
Phooey42 writes "USA Today is reporting that Intel has finally announced names for their new set of desktop and notebook processor lines, previously dubbed Conroe and Merom. The new chips for both the desktop and laptop lines will be dubbed "Core 2 Duo", whereas their new "premium processor" for high end desktop users will be called the "Core 2 Extreme". Knowing Intel, who would have ever thought that the successor to the Core Duo would be the Core 2 Duo!?"
Intel has recently come up with a series of totally unoriginal and ultimately confusing names for their CPUs.
For example, the "Core Duo" is a pretty unoriginal name for a dual core processor, and I've seen a lot of people start referring to dual core CPUs as "DuoCore" or other such nonsense.
Core 2 Duo? Talk about redundant and confusing naming...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
against anything with the word "extreem" in it. This includes dictionaries that still contain this "word".
Assholes, just name the thing "2 cores @ 3.8 ghz with 2 MB Cache 800 FSB."
That always pissed me off about AMD too. processors with the same clock speed but varying amounts of cache warranted a different "fake speed name". Fuck that, I hate having to read a spec chart to figure out exactly whats in a god damn cpu.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I'm pretty sure the CPU makers quit caring about the general public's level of understanding about their processors a while ago. It used to be pretty simple, really. You had a primary name of a CPU and then a Mhz speed rating. That was apparently too much for many consumers to comprehend - judging by how many folks had no idea how many generations of Pentiums there were. (EG. "Isn't there a Pentium 5 now, or is the Pentium 4 the best one out?")
But these days, processor sales are geared towards the system builders and enthusiasts. Basically, it's up to Dell or HP or your local "mom and pop" system builder to choose an appropriate CPU for a given machine, and then to sell it on its merits to an end-user.
Really, with all the obfuscation of the true speeds of CPUs lately, not to mention all the variants with different numbers of pins on a socket, different amounts of internal cache, etc. - it seems like they're trying hard to ensure the "average user" *can't* understand exactly where the CPU they own benchmarks relative to the others.
Intel has been dropping the ball lately on performance... it seems like the inmates in Marketing have been running this asylum for some time now. They need to hand it back over to Engineering if they are to stop their decline.
Especially now that even Marketing is running out of ideas, evidenced by stupid product names and logos. (VIIV? 64? 75? Core 2 Duo... Extreme? Wha...?!)
Make the product perform better than the competition. Make "Intel Inside" *mean something*.
Do that, and I'd be willing to bet that everything else (including bad marketing) will take care of itself.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
the problem with generic product names here, though, is that they lack a logical increment signifier in a strongly incremental field -- with cars, you have a very simple system: car line, plus model year -- you know Q-Turbo9000 2006 came after the 2005. But tell me now: which is newer/faster? Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955? Intel Pentium 4 670? Intel Pentium M 770? Intel Xeon 3.0? the numbers run differently in every line, with no discernable (to the consumer) relation.
Let's trying to name our products as confusingly as possible:
Memory Stick (with MagicGate)
Memory Stick Pro
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick Pro Duo
Darned if I know which one will or will not work in my camera. Looks like they want to do the same thing for motherboards.