Tech Talk
The Alphabet Is Being Used Against Us
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How often have you actually stopped to read the features on that new computer you’ve been looking at? What’s a Phenom Core i5 X6 Duo Atom? It’s unfortunate, but price doesn’t always dictate to the shopper that they’re getting a better/faster product. You’re essentially being fed Alphabet Soup out of a fire hydrant.
On the surface, Intel seems to have things right. You have Intel Core i7, i5, and i3 series of processors. Standard perception from anyone should be “higher number = more powerful”. Upon the introduction of the Core i-series of processors, they were all assigned 3-digit numbers to further assist people in telling them apart.
Then Intel threw us in for a loop. Recently, Intel released some redesigned processors that have an entirely new way of doing things. Clearly, these processors needed names. Instead of giving a new design a new name, they just squeezed those processors into their existing naming conventions.
Enter the Intel Core i7-2600k and the i5-2500k. Under the hood, they’re unrelated to their brethren that carry the i7 & i5 names. In terms of marketing, they’re supposed to be younger-brothers.
I guess it’s not entirely uncommon for Intel to cling to a popular name for the sake of marketing. The Pentium name was brought onto the public conscience in March of 1993. It remained as the name of their flagship processors all the way until 2006 when the Intel Core series made its debut. The Pentium name still continues to this very day, but as a name for their budget line of processors. Let’s not even get into the delineations between Intel’s Atom, Celeron & Xeon line of processors.
Thankfully, the internet is here to empower you with information. One of my favorite things to help sort things out is the “Bench” section of AnandTech.com. In relation to the alphabet soup discussed above, it clearly shows some oddities in product lines. For example, in some respects, several models of Intel Core i5 are more powerful than some Core i7 models.
In the end, we consumers are often the victims of overly complex marketing schemes drawn up by committee and flung out with seemingly little oversight. Granted, companies like Intel have vast product lines. However the consumers shouldn’t have to suffer. In the case of companies that can swing around their weight in any fashion they choose, we have no choice but to sort through complex naming schemes so that we can find the best bang for the buck.
Stay educated. Stay informed. Save a dollar. That’s the way to be a good consumer.
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