this scale will be obsolete as soon as new cpus come out

Which is exactly why this scale is only good until September 2009. Intel will release a new chart to reflect the advancements in product.

This is a little deceptive, if only Core i7 is rated as 5 star, then what about the various applications where it shows little to no benefit over the previous generation? This is aimed at consumers who have lot's of money, but don't know much about computers(as if they weren't already all Mac users...).

Ooo, I guess I can mark the 30th of September down on my calendar for release dates

Everyone loves scales oh wait vista... just gives ppl another reason to complain when they don't get the unbelievable performance they want.

Why do we have such a small picture? Would be nice if we could actually see the chart before we bash it...

Hmmm... Wouldn't it be better to just consolidate the brands rather than to increase brand float? That would save on production and marketing costs, as well as increase customer appeal.

If I headed Intel, I'd have nothing but Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and i7 out there right now for desktops on the consumer market. The commercial and industrial world would still see Pentium and Celeron (after all, a desk representative doesn't need a quad core, someone in Accounting who doesn't need a Core 2 Duo even)(assuming you are running your databases directly from the server instead of on each computer, and if you are doing that I highly advise you to change your setup).

Atom for netbooks of course.

I like the star rating but to make it last more than one cpu release cycle, they should affix a date qualifier to it, e.g., nStar2Q09, nStar4q09. That way, one would be more able to keep the rating in perspective.

we need a universal platform performance score similar but better then PCMark's cpu score or something but more every day apps (not something like SuperPi) etc to give a rating and compare it to efficiency etc

"Remember back in the day when we could simply identify the capabilities of a CPU based on its generation or family name"


You know what really grinds my gears? I dont understand WHY they cant do this still! Why not set a standard of performance, say, millions of instructions per second or instructions per mHZ * thread count or SOMETHING. If they at least set a standard it will be easier on everyone.

Same for the server market! I'm getting sick of over hundreds of model numbers all of which I shouldnt have to keep up on.

You know what would be a VERY helpful tool, a list of all known processor model numbers and the metadata that goes along with it as a tool on the CPU chart page or something. It's hard to find one good spot where all this information resides. Hell even put future roadmap processors in there!

(ranting again)

Corey7inside is correct even if he included that irrelevant anti-Mac statement at the end. Intel is just dumbing things down the wrong way and people who don't follow hardware and know what it's about are just being deceived. This is almost as bad as Philips and RCA and their "good, better, best, ultimate, etc" branding of their video equipment. Tell us WHY it's at the level you say it's at. Don't just expect us to buy it based on how good YOU say it is, because you're the one who's trying to sell it.

apache_lives is absolutely correct. It's about time we had a hard number to use as an industry standard. Instructions per second sounds fine, and I can't think of any reason they don't use something like this other than to intentionally confuse people into relying on how good they say it is. There IS an easy way to get the uninformed public to understand how good each part is, but the industry willingly fails to embrace it.

My mistake, I meant rbarone69 instead of apache_lives.

Full size version of the chart:
http://www.intel.com/consumer/rating.htm

i gave Celeron 0 star

I think the new logos look really goofy. I liked it the way Core 2 was presented.

Can't really do that. Certain processors are are better at different instructions. A cut and dry single number isn't going to tell me much about all processors fairly. Hell, just brining up multi-core processors ruins that number. They can output processing equal to a much more powerful single core, but the single core will win out 99.99% of the time because of the application.

As great as it would be to just have a number, it isn't practical, nor would it be much use.

Stars? Looks like dollar signs to me.

I think there is better solution than placing stars. People will ask, why 1 star, 2, 3 processors.

Use the mobile phone way in naming chips. Like nokia 331, 5210, 8310, Pentium 3310 celeron. Pentium 5210 (dual core), Pentium 8310 (quad core), then its easier

Now wait for AMD's 10 to 5 star rating system.

Maybe it will be a sliding scale and when the Core i7 8-core chips come out, or Core i8 or whatever, they'll drop the star ratings of all other chips by one? The hard logos don't seem to have stars on them, so it's just a packaging issue, not laptop stickers?

Naturally, your mileage my vary. The i7 920 IS a better chip than a Core2Duo, even though that Core2Duo may out preform in some situations. Heck, in some uses an Atom is a better fit for someone's needs, doesn't mean it's a superior chip!

Actually that's a problem with the applications not the processors. The i7 absolutely has more processing muscle than the previous chips - regardless of whether or not the software you're running can use it. Does that mean you need it? No. But if what you're running is running fine than why would you even look to buy something new? I'm a software developer who often needs to run multiple virtual machines to do my work. I got a core i7 back in Feb (the bottom-of the-line 920, which I *easily* overclocked by 30%). I can be running 4 VMs: Win2003 database server, Win2003 sharepoint server, an XP machine running CoD4 multi-player server /MySQL / Python, and play CoD4 in Vista64 on the host OS all with no performance issues on any of the VMs as compared with 4 Core-2 *physical* machines that I would have been running about a year ago.

I would say anyone who currently keeps more than one PC turned on most of the time could benefit from the new crop of processors simply by consolidating their hardware and using virtual machines (VMWare Server rocks and it's free).

The fact that the software for many desktop and gaming applications can't take advantage of the multiple cores is not really something Intel can concern themselves with. It's been widely accepted that we can only go so far down the clock-speed road; if we want performance gains in the future it has to come through parallel processing. The game developers simply have to catch up with the hardware.

Oh yeah, and BTW, the i7 is not the only 5-star desktop CPU in the chart. Q9xxx processor is listed as 5-star, but the pictures so damn small and blurry that it's easy to miss!

Cheers,
CList

...oh yeah, I should have mentioned that I fully agree that this whole "star system" is waste of Intel's marketing budget and a simpler, more universal measure of absolute performance (as opposed to point-in-time-relative performance) would better serve consumers... =D

- CL

Stars? Like hotels...diners...and kinter garden?

A rating system that has to constantly be updated...thus invalidating all previous advertising, media etc. every x months.

"damn...we need to chuck all these charts...they have the wrong stars on the processors now"

"Hey wasn't that a 4 star processor?"

"No it was a 4 star processor last month now its a 2 star"

"But I thought only celerons are two stars"

"That was last year now they are negative 3 and aren't listed"

"But this celeron is a 1 star?"

"That's the new celeron, it just came out"


No...I'm sorry...stars are an obnoxious choice. Keep with a number system that makes sense and you can scale without constantly rebranding or using gimmicky crap like stars...which effectively involves constantly re applying them and invalidating all old applications.

What are they supposed to give us their products for free? stupid comment.

lol, I meant gHZ hehe..

Granted... But as applications start to use more threads (as they will) the number will mean more. The "or SOMETHING" comment I made means I really dont know what I'm talking about

I like this system...

I think for computer hardware illiterate people this will make purchases much easier. I think the average Joe doesn’t know the difference between Pentium/Celeron/Core/Core2/Quad/ and they probably have never heard of i7...

So will there be 6star and up soon as technology advances, or will the 5star processor of today be a 4 star next month?

Stupid, and why do they even make Celerons AND Pentium dual cores? Anybody that cant afford a Pentium Dual core is not gonna buy a Celeron system, their gonna buy a AMD X2.

A 2ghz single core Celeron goes for $50 on Newegg. You can get a 2.8ghz dual core X2 Black Edition for $58. Which would you choose?

You can't judge a processors by Hz. Some processors do more work in a single cycle than others do. A 3.8 Ghz P4 would get its metaphoric ass butchered by a single i7 920 core, and it's 2.66 Ghz stock.

Clock speed only means anything when comparing processors of a similar family.

I am pretty confident that was the logic that spurred this idea grieve.

But if the star system is always relative it looses meaning unless all your marketing is fully updated all the way down to the consumer level with every iteration. Costly and unlikely to happen without gaps and hiccups.

By comparison even if they have a basic numbering system that actually correlates to performance somehow but can scale without constantly reinventing the number system being used then all marketing and processor branding holds despite newer products being released.

Rebranding is pretty expensive. The "stars" model essentially forces rebranding of most of the product lineup at nearly every processor release. AKA its grossly inefficient. The only way it will be useful is if they purely use the star system for reference instead of marketing, aka as an online tool etc. Easily updatable and maintained. I doubt that will be the case however.