
Pentium? Core i5? Core i7? Making sense of Intel’s convoluted CPU lineup - nkurz
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/pentium-core-i5-core-i7-making-sense-of-intels-convoluted-cpu-lineup/
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vardump
Intel is just hurting itself with the naming scheme. I've lost count how many
times I've heard people say "Oh, it has only i5/i7. I've had i5 already for X
years. No point to upgrade."

I guess Nvidia / AMD graphics card style naming might work the best. Product
name (Xeon, Pentium, whatever), #generation digit, 1-3 digits of
entry/mid/premium level. Like Celeron 120 (generation 1, premium level 2(0)).

Right now non-technical people seem to be still expecting i6 and i8 CPUs.

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bsilvereagle
When Intel's iX series was first released, the numbering scheme they had is
almost exactly what you described.

i7-720: "7" was the performance tier, "20" the generation

So an i7-820 was the same generation, but a higher performance tier, and the
i7-940 was yet another higher performance tier and a later generation.

They've later switched to a 4 digit numbering scheme which is decipherable,
but not nearly as clear as the 3 digit scheme. The introduction of quadcore
i5s and dual core i7s really muddled the waters.

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icegreentea
What? The "20" was never the generation.

The i7-720, i7-820, and i7-940 are all Nehalem (ie first generation) core
parts.

The numbering more or less makes sense if you prepend a 0 to the "720". Now
your generations make perfect sense.

Current desktop product codes still more or less make sense. Mobile is a
complete clusterfuck though.

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bsilvereagle
I guess "generation" may have been the wrong word. "Age" or "iteration" may
have been more appropriate. The 720 was launched Q3'09 and the 740 was Q3'10.

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cft
The practical end of Moore's law is quite evident from this.

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jlgaddis
> _And if you’re building a PC now after having been out of the game for a few
> years, it can be exceptionally confusing._

No kidding. I've been out of the "hardware game" for quite a few years now,
having not built a PC in probably 15 years (and pretty much exclusively buying
laptops for the last 10 or so). That was very apparent when I decided a few
months ago to build myself a new server and began investigating options.

I was surprised by one thing in particular, though. According to TFA, the
4000-series (Haswell) are "the _old_ chips". My primary machine for almost the
last four years (until I bought a shiny new MacBook Pro back in mid-September)
was a Lenovo Thinkpad W530 with an i7-3740QM chip. That is, AFAICT, one
generation _OLDER_ than "the _old_ chips".

Nearly four years after I bought it, however, it remains the most powerful
machine I own and still has better specs than most of the brand new laptops I
see for sale at a quick glance. It has four cores at 2.70 GHz, 32 GB of RAM,
and a pair of Samsung 850 PRO 256 GB SSDs (just installed within the last two
weeks). The screen is nice and pretty, too, with full HD (1920x1080
resolution). It's still a monster of a laptop today. I opted for the biggest
battery I could get in it and, at a guess, it's still probably at 75-80%
(capacity-wise) of what it was on day one (battery life isn't one of FreeBSD's
strengths, but it's acceptable).

Compare that to the 15" MacBook Pro I bought in September which has a quad-
core i7 at 2.20 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of whatever newfangled storage
technology (PCIe, I think?) Apple shoved in it. The screen resolution
(2880x1800 vs 1920x1080) is higher although the difference isn't _that_
noticeable unless you're really looking.

I am confused by one thing in TFA, though. It states, under the "Core i5"
heading:

> _These are all quad-core CPUs ..._

I'm not sure if the article is wrong, I'm "misremembering" or what, but ISTR
seeing plenty of i5 CPUs that are only dual core.

One thing is for sure, though, the identifying/labeling and marketing of CPUs
is confusing as hell (and will probably only get worse). Fortunately, when
building my new server recently, I found some posts online by others who were
building very similar machines and was able to benefit from their knowledge. I
considered myself very lucky when I managed to buy components that all worked
together perfectly the first time and didn't have to return or exchange
anything.

If you're going to be putting a new machine together anytime soon, definitely
spend some time doing some research and make sure you purchase components that
are compatible. It's amazing how much difference there can be between two
similar pieces of hardware whose model numbers differ by only one digit or
letter.

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nemothekid
The only difference between those machines is the CPU. While the clock speed
is lower, I wouldn't be surprised if the current quad i7 is much faster than
the 4 year old quad.

Which really only adds to the confusion - its really not easy to tell how much
faster this years i7 is against last year's i7, since clock speed doesn't
really matter anymore when comparing across architectures.

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ender89
Honestly the one thing you need to know is if your processor is a celron or
not.

