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Intel Confuses, Rebrands Some Core M Processors As Core I (laptopmag.com)
Reader thegarbz writes: As already covered previously Intel has announced it's 7th generation Kaby Lake processors. Curiously absent from the announcement was any mention of Core m5 and Core m7 product lines. As it turns out, Intel quietly removed the m branding and rolled its budget processors up into the Core i5 and Core i7 brands.
When we met with representatives of Intel to talk about Kaby Lake, they said that consumers didn't understand the Core m branding and that this move would help alleviate customer confusion.But what's more confusing: having two different brand names for different types of CPU or having the same name for both? Intel will tell you that you have to pay attention to the SKU numbers at the end of the chip names. And if you do, you can sidestep the issue. The regular i-series will continue as usual: Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7, with all of the processor numbers ending in the letter "U" (the i3-7100U, i5-7200U and i7-7500U). The former m5 and m7 will have the letter "Y" in the name (i5-7Y54, i7-7Y75 and m3-7Y30).
Y Intel?
How in the world is that less confusing?
"Don't look at the product name to know what you are buying, look at that tiny ass number on the bottom of the box! Duh!"
All I care about is if it is a Dell or not. I don't know what a core is.
Why even bother with that? They could have gone with a car-like naming convention.
{series}{grade}{desktop/laptop/lowpower}{overclock}{arbitraryCharacterToConfuse}
Why, they only need to say "Our top of the line is the 358DKL!, it's much higher powered than the 799PNS!"
Bonus that they could be read much like a license plate. Who wouldn't snicker at the chance to say "three-fifty-eight dickel" or "seven-ninety-nine penis"?
And push it completely into total apathy.
To be honest, they are so many product lines and SKUs out there these days that the only thing I do is search for the passmark rating and make sure it isn't a total dog and that it's at least a little bit better then what I used to have. Is there a better approach? For my desktop / hyper-v server I'm still running a 5 year old i7-2600k (passmark 8504) and don't really see any need to replace it. My laptop is running an i7-2620m (passmark 3811) and it seems fine to.
It seems like stupid naming, but I can't see how the change has much real-world relevance. How many people pay attention to the processor at all, except Slashdot types?
#DeleteChrome
This isn't like Atom, which used an entirely different core design. Core M (both Broadwell and Skylake) is just a regular Core i, with a lower TDP and clock speeds. Core M Broadwell limited Turbo Boost to a single core, but Skylake will Turbo on both cores. It seems to be using the i7 dual core design, since Core M has 4MB cache like the i7, instead of 3MB like the i5 and i3. Which is also why Skylake Core M beats out a similarly-clocked Skylake mobile i5 in certain short benchmarks - the benchmark isn't long enough for thermal throttling to kick in, and the 4MB cache beats out the 3MB cache.
Is the nVidia GTX 5000 Ti slower or faster than the Radeon R11 2500?
Is the Intel i9-3400X slower or faster than the AMD Athlon X8-1200Z?
It's not about being too lazy to do some research, it's that even when you have all the information it's still confusing.
And AMD Maxpower will beat and max out the limits of your cooling.
Also what the rebranding that both amd and nvidia does with the video cards?
You mean nVidia 8600GS vs GTX 680, for example?
Yes, that's yet another hurdle in understanding their marketing numbers.
Not sure about this line of processors to begin with. Do consumers really care about the thinness and lightness of their laptop that much? It may offer more possibilities to PC makers going forward in terms of the form of the devices they can imagine and create, but look at a new Macbook and a Macbook Air, Core M vs Core i5. You have a drop in performance for the Core M and the weight difference is shedding a mere 0.35 pounds. It seems to me once you hit 2.5 pounds and half an inch thick you are bumping up against a law of diminishing returns. Not sure how cost factors in however, and I have been wrong many times before.
is whether or not the CPU is one of these 'will only run Win 10' ones, or is it able to run other OS's
There's only 1 reason for this - and it is NOT to alleviate confusion of consumers. Instead, it's to help prevent them from ASKING in the first place. Why would the customer ask about something they can't see and thus, aren't made aware of? It's pretty close to a bait-and-switch in my opinion, in that the customer thinks they are getting one thing, and are really getting another. I'd wager there "y" series is a little more expensive than it ordinarily would be too. /end rant.
Having an easy and accurate choice for consumers is far less preferable than making them look at all your products, and potentially have to decide on buying the more expensive on the basis it must be better.
I expect video card makers to change up their numbering systems any day now for just this reason.
Why make better value for our customers with more cores and/or lower prices when we can just barf alphanumeric soup all over the box?
Seriously, all the naming obsfucation has taken the fun out of building a new PC, and Win10 has sucked the fun out of owning one. You have to do a lot of searching around to dig through all the marketing BS to figure out what components actually do and whether they are worth the change to buy them
and Y is for "Yuck!", got it.
There's R7 240 with GDDR3 memory, R7 240 with GDDR5, R7 250 with GDDR3 and R7 250 with GDDR5.
Both are only named "R7 240" and "R7 250". The perf difference is tremendous, it's a nastier and older trick. The 240 GDDR5 is much faster than the 240 GDDR3, and a lot faster than the 250 GDDR3 too.
I suspect this is how HP are planning on getting away with shipping i5 and i7 processors in its new form factor PCs. They sound fast, until you realise the i5 and i7 are really M/Ys.
By making the labelling more confusing, fewer buyers can make informed buying decisions, and are thus more subject to the ShinyThingEffect (whereby there is little intelligent thought capable of counting the feelings of 'Oooh! ShinyThing!') and then manufacturers get a level playing field of ShinyThing-ness.
John_Chalisque