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Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

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Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#31

Post by technocratius »

klyrs wrote: post #9

Nothing says executive floundering quite like blowing millions on a rebrand. Here's an idea: make it a new product, a good one, and give that a different name.

Depends on what you consider a "new" product though. Intel makes CPUs, and if you look at it from an architectural perspective it's quite reasonable to say that every generation is a new product. But I guess you could argue that when the core functionality (CPU) stays the same (as opposed to changing it to e.g. an APU), the product stays the same...

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#32

Post by klodolph »

MBCook wrote: post #15
klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

I kind of like what Nvidia has been doing in GPUs. They have series. 1000s, 2000s, 3000s. Each generate is a new series. Then the products inside seem to be in performance order. A 3080 is better than a 3060 is better than a 3020 (if that exists). I know it gets messier than that. The fact that they add the titanium versions kind of screws with it. And in the last year they had that card they had to renumber because…

The problem with Nvidia is that I blinked and the numbers wrapped around, so a GeForce RTX 4070 is really new, but a GeForce FX 5200 is really old.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#33

Post by rdtsc »

klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

> there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

Since switching to laptops from building my own PCs from parts I stopped following CPU models directly. I knew i3 was "weaker" than i5, and i5 "weaker" than i7. But remember getting an "i5" 10 years and they are still selling them. Shouldn't it be up to i15 by now? It would have been better to have some suffix or prefix letters "Pro", or "Super" to indicate tiers.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#34

Post by anakaine »

leidenfrost wrote: post #24
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is especially true after the last few years of CPU innovation. A 2023 Core i3-13100 beats a 2018 Core i7-8700K, at least in Passmark, in single and multi. Let alone a 2009 Core i7…

... looks like I'll need to upgrade the CPU soon lol

My daily driver is from 2014.

Each time I spec up a new PC in line with what I want for data workloads, some spatial, and probably the odd bit of video work, I'm reminded just how expensive hardware has become.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#35

Post by wmf »

rdtsc wrote: post #33
klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

> there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from. Since switching to laptops from building my own PCs from parts I stopped following CPU models directly. I knew i3 was "weaker" than i5, and i5 "weaker" than i7. But remember getting an "i5" 10 years and they are still selling them. Shouldn't it be up to i15 by now? It would have been better to have some suffi…

BMW is also still selling the 5 series.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#36

Post by p1necone »

MBCook wrote: post #15
klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

I kind of like what Nvidia has been doing in GPUs. They have series. 1000s, 2000s, 3000s. Each generate is a new series. Then the products inside seem to be in performance order. A 3080 is better than a 3060 is better than a 3020 (if that exists). I know it gets messier than that. The fact that they add the titanium versions kind of screws with it. And in the last year they had that card they had to renumber because…

You've touched on the main problem (imo) that seems to happen with large hardware companies adopting consistent naming for performance segments in your comment. Once you've got a sane naming scheme and you've used it for a few generations the incentive to use it to mislead consumers is very high.

Why sell this generations X070 equivalent as an x070 when you can call it an x080 instead and know that a very large chunk of your customer base wont look at the actual specs before paying an extra ~$100 for it? Probably not good in the long term, but who cares about the long term when you can boost sales numbers on a new product now and make shareholders happy.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#37

Post by leetcrew »

MBCook wrote: post #15
klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

I kind of like what Nvidia has been doing in GPUs. They have series. 1000s, 2000s, 3000s. Each generate is a new series. Then the products inside seem to be in performance order. A 3080 is better than a 3060 is better than a 3020 (if that exists). I know it gets messier than that. The fact that they add the titanium versions kind of screws with it. And in the last year they had that card they had to renumber because…

> But at least you know a 3080 is two generations newer than a 1080. Compared to the seemingly random numbers on CPUs it’s simple.

CPU SKUs work exactly the same way? intel has gone longer than nvidia without restarting the numbering, so they need two digits instead of one.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#38

Post by opportune »

klodolph wrote: post #6

I do think the i3/i5/i7/i9 monikers are actually pretty confusing, just speaking as someone who has been using computers much longer than the brand existed. Problem is that a CPU from 2009 is going to be called an “i5” and there are just so many people who say they have an “i5” or “i7” without knowing what generation it is from.

Exactly, I wish their naming conventions were more literate/descriptive than they are now. The names of two processors tells you almost nothing regarding how they compare to each other. And I mean, marketing actual specs runs the risk of oversimplifying performance but also, as a consumer I don’t want to go to some benchmarking site or load multiple different pages of specs just to understand the difference between two SKUs - having to do that actually makes it harder for intel to market and differentiate their chips because it shifts the job to third parties who will also compare them to AMD, not explain why the benchmark fails to capture that chipX has laptop thermals, etc

Intel’s branding was particularly bad in that i9 usually indicated higher performance than eg i3, but old i9s could be much worse than newer i7s (or even i5/3) and it was hard to distinguish them. And new i3s could be the most performant or efficient choice for some consumers over an i9 sometimes; shitty i3s made the good i3s also look bad.

It seems simple to use a naming convention embedding stuff like node/process/fab provenance, cores, clock, specialization or thermals, version… it’s a lot easier to understand basic differences between an Intel-L7n8c35H.2 (laptop, 7nm, 8 core, 3.5 GHz, version 2) and an Intel-D5n12c38H.1 even if it doesn’t capture every distinction.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#39

Post by MBCook »

rincebrain wrote: post #17
ddtaylor wrote: post #13

Can we just go back to numbers where higher is always better?

Well, if we have 32 cores at 2 GHz, and 48 cores at 1.5 GHz, from the same chip architecture, which is better? For some workloads, it's one; for others, it's the other. A one-dimensional performance axis is hard in practice.

You could use a synthetic benchmark. Create your own Geekbench like thing and use those numbers.

Intel-$singlecore-$multicore

So an Intel-6-12 had twice the single core performance of the Intel-3-48 but is much worse in multicore.

Yeah, things are WAY more complicated. But at least it gives you a chance without memorizing spec sheets first. Higher numbers are always better. No redefining. This year’s 5 can’t be better than last year’s 20 in performance.

I don’t follow Intel/AMD chips anymore. If I wanted to buy a computer I’d have to learn it all from scratch. This would give me a nice leg up.

Re: Intel to drop the “I” moniker in upcoming CPU rebrand

#40

Post by gjsman-1000 »

anakaine wrote: post #34
leidenfrost wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... looks like I'll need to upgrade the CPU soon lol

My daily driver is from 2014. Each time I spec up a new PC in line with what I want for data workloads, some spatial, and probably the odd bit of video work, I'm reminded just how expensive hardware has become.

Depends on how you look at it. A modern Core i3 smashing a 5 year old Core i7? What a deal! Pointing to the highest cost version of a market while ignoring the actual speed provided has always been a bad metric for “expensive.”

Plus, this isn’t historically true. An Apple II cost nearly $6000 after inflation. Heck, the Atari cost nearly $1000 in today’s money. The first Macintosh cost $6500 after inflation. Commodore 64? $1670. Heck, $250 from 2014 had the buying power of $310 now. Building a $1000 computer in 2014 would cost $240 more now, and yet our parts are superbly faster.

And you can always pick up a 5-year-old PC with hardware no slower now than it was then for a few hundred bucks. It’s only expensive if you must have latest and greatest for some reason; or look at prices without considering inflation or the magnitude of the performance improvements.

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