Intel Shows New Logos, Star Rating System
Intel has revealed its new logos for the entire line of its CPUs, as well as a new star ranking system.
Remember back in the day when we could simply identify the capabilities of a CPU based on its generation or family name, coupled with its clock speed? Ah, those were the simple days. But with the divergence in thinking between efficiency and raw clock speed numbers, things soon got even more complicated through the use of model numbers.
Now there are other things to consider, such as cache, the number of cores and even special features such as Hyper-Threading. To help consumers, especially those who do not read Tom's Hardware, Intel is rolling out a five-star system that will rate each processor against various factors. Like with hotels and restaurants, the higher the star rating, the more expensive and better the product.
Predictably, the Core i7 processors all qualify as being five star rated, while the one stars are for the modest Celerons. Check out the chart below for the ratings good through September 2009.
Also of note from the chart above are the new Intel processor branding logos. Rather than being oriented in portrait view like what we're used to, as well as Microsoft's own logo stickers, the new ones are in landscape -- though do retain the same dimensions. Displayed most prominently on each logo are the specific branding of Core, Pentium, Celeron, Atom or Centrino with a die shot as a corner background.
"It's important for people to understand that we've got all these different brands, but we have a challenge when people come to retail," spokesman Bill Calder said to PC Magazine. "How do I distinguish between the Pentium and Celeron and Core and Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad?"
Will the new Intel logos and star ratings help consumers make more informed buying decisions? Will the new landscape-oriented stickers mess with your computer's mojo? Hopefully we'll soon have answers to these pressing questions.
Which is exactly why this scale is only good until September 2009. Intel will release a new chart to reflect the advancements in product.
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.
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)
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.
http://www.intel.com/consumer/rating.htm
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.
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
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