Intel Confuses, Rebrands Some Core M Processors As Core I (laptopmag.com) 61
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).
The only question I have is (Score:4, Funny)
How in the world (Score:4, Interesting)
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!"
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Re:How in the world (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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That's because the Mac Mini uses mobile processors, and most (all?) mobile Core i5's are dual core with Hyperthreading. The real fun is that the lower-end mobile Core i7's are also dual cores with Hyperthreading. I'm not even sure what the difference is supposed to be between those and the mobile i5's, except perhaps a bit more L3 cache.
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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.
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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 cl
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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 logicall
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This sort of flip-flopping makes no sense when viewed from the outside, but if you look at the internal politics, it does. [..] 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.
Oh, I agree entirely- I've no doubt that's a plausible explanation too.
Point is that the decision smacked of internal positioning and politics- whether it was some mediocrity trying to increase their prominence or importance or (as you suggested) internal factionalising and displays of power, or whatever- rather than being about what was best from a marketing point of view. Because it wasn't!
I posted a comment several years back [slashdot.org] explaining how the well-known contradiction of MS employing countless talen
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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!"
Well, to be fair. The core i5 and i7 processors ending in U, are not real mobile i7 or i5s either and should have been labelled at most mobile i3, since the i7U is 2 core 4 threads like a proper mobile i3H is
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
{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 (Score:3)
Benchmark (Score:3, Insightful)
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Watch porn, what else?
We care... but no one else does (Score:2)
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?
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And AMD Maxpower will beat and max out the limits of your cooling.
Re:of course it is to alleviate customer confusion (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Also what the rebranding that both amd and nvidia does with the video cards?
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You mean nVidia 8600GS vs GTX 680, for example?
Yes, that's yet another hurdle in understanding their marketing numbers.
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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.
They use the same core (Score:5, Informative)
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They've had the same core for a while, that doesn't change the fact that they were setup and advertised as two different tiers of hardware with different performance and different price points. This made for easy advertising. You knew what to expect when a laptop was advertised with an i7 inside. Not anymore.
no need to worry (Score:1)
Core M (Score:3)
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As someone who holds my laptop, yes I care. Less closed thinking please. We're in a world of a hundred devices for a hundred purposes. Crossover devices are not think and light enough yet.
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Oh gods yes. I have a woman at work that works with very large and complicated excel spreadsheets. She will only use an 11 inch MacAir, because ANYTHING ELSE is TOO HEAVY. Even though she admits its very challenging working on such a small screen, she's slower to work, and that it gives her headaches, she won't budge.
The thing that I care about (Score:3)
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
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Not to mention, I bet Linux and GCC support for the instructions will actually happen first. Linux usually gets CPU instruction set support first as an open test platform but it is rarely advertised. Finally it does not stop individual applications implementing such instruction sets either way. In fact, there is very little in the kernels of either OS that would benefit from these specialist instruction sets.
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I would care more about people understanding the difference between a marketing announcement and actually breaking backwards compatibility. Your old windows will run on a new processor just fine. Just don't expect it to use all the fancy new features.
MS made an announcement about something which has been standard in the computer would now for 20 years and people collectively lose their shit.
There's only 1 reason. (Score:2)
Confusion is usually the actual goal (Score:2)
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.
Easier?! (Score:2)
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
U is for "Useable" (Score:2)
and Y is for "Yuck!", got it.
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When obfuscation is your business model (Score:1)
More SihinyThing Marketing (Score:2)
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.