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).

Comments

The only question I have is

[Kyogreex]

Y Intel?

How in the world

[TFlan91]

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!"

Re:How in the world

[SeaFox]

How in the world is that less confusing?

It's not. I suspect the real reason is to remove the less-desireable m-branding from the products and trick some unwitting people into buying lower-performing hardware.

Re:How in the world

[radarskiy]

The Y SKUs are the sub-5 Watt SKUs, so you're never in a position to be comparing a Y to a U is you're at the level where you are looking at the 3,5,7 branding.

If you are at the level where you are looking at the complete model number, then you were already looking at Y vs. U and ignoring the 3,5,7 so this is no additional effort.

Re:How in the world

[Dogtanian]

How in the world is that less confusing?

It's not, it's just another case of too many marketers spoiling the broth.

A similar example is the revived Pentium brand. This was fine when it originally when it represented Intel's "mainstream" x86 line, with Celeron being the cut down models and Xeon the server versions. Simple. Then they ditched the name when the Core brand came out. Whatever; except that instead of sticking with the new hierarchy, they decided to bring the Pentium brand back.

Only now its old place had been taken and there was no clear need for it, so (from what I can tell), they sort of fudged a gap that didn't exist between the Celeron and the mainstream Core lines. That appears to be the poorly-defined and generally pointless market positioning for the post-resurrection Pentium brand (and one that is at odds with its previous "main line" positioning).

There was absolutely no need for this.

Ironically I'm pretty sure the people with the least understanding of (and interest in) Intel's chips are those likely to be buying computers based around upper-entry-level chips like the "Pentium".

You can argue whether or not they should have ditched the name in the first place, but having done so, it was an absolutely stupid idea to bring it back. It smacks of someone in marketing trying to justify their salary (and get noticed) by waving about some market research showing that the Pentium name still had value and they should use it again.

Of course, it could be that Intel know *exactly* what they're doing and were/are deliberately making the naming of their chips more opaque and confusing in an attempt to exploit rational ignorance.

Re:How in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Always check the passmark score on the CPU before buying a new laptop. Ignore any CPU that's not at least 50% faster than your previous laptop.

Re:How in the world

[ShanghaiBill]

You can argue whether or not they should have ditched the name in the first place, but having done so, it was an absolutely stupid idea to bring it back.

This sort of flip-flopping makes no sense when viewed from the outside, but if you look at the internal politics, it does. Most likely the original decision was opposed by some VP or faction, but was pushed through anyway. Now the power has shifted, and the re-namers are out of power, so bringing back the "old-name" is a way for their opponents to emphasize their dominance, sort of the way that an alpha monkey will shake his pee-pee at the other monkeys.

Anyone that expects a corporation to behave logically and consistently over a period of years has never sat in a boardroom and seen the petty politics and childish score-setting that goes on.

What?

[110010001000]

All I care about is if it is a Dell or not. I don't know what a core is.

Why bother?

[ausekilis]

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"?

Wish to alleviate customer confusion

[meerling]

And push it completely into total apathy.

Benchmark

[chrpai]

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.

They use the same core

[Solandri]

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.

Re:of course it is to alleviate customer confusion

[Yvan256]

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.

Core M

[puddingebola]

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.

The thing that I care about

[rossdee]

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

U is for "Useable"

[lusid1]

and Y is for "Yuck!", got it.