Intel Is Killing The Core i7 

"We realized our branding was only clear to techies, so we've decided to change it so now it's confusing to everyone! #Equality"

The 13th generation is older than the 14th generation. Sounds pretty clear to me.... 3

The ones who did't understood the old reference system won't be able to understand the new system either, they never cared anyways. The ones who undestood it will find it pointless.

Hiding the generation in the 'small print' will make selling prev-gen chips easier.

I assume someone in marketing ran out of productive things to do and decided to make their naming scheme worse so it secures their job for the next 10 years fixing it.

There was a time where 3 was workspace, 5 was middle ground, 7 was gaming. Now there are going to be gaming comparisons between core 7 and ultra 5, ect ect.

They must have hired someone from the USB naming department…

The new naming scheme is more confusing, we all got used to "Higher number means more performance" metric xD

the amount of times when I ask what CPU someone has I get "an i7" or "ryzen 7" as an answer is insane. When telling them their CPU is 10 years old and they should upgrade they still go ".. but it's an i7 though isn't that good??"

This is as confusing as the rebranding of usb speeds standard

Having worked at Intel, this cements my opinion of their marketing group. They had a system that at least i3, then i5, then i7, was good better best. But then they started selling multiple generations at the same time, resulting in sometimes an i5 being as good or better than previous gen i7. So they added gen numbers and i9, because more versions make the whole, Sears good better best model clearer? So now they'll drop the gen numbers, and the i's... now giving us 6 categories, with the line between where core and core ultra begin to overlap, totally unclear to users, as yes, marketing is really doing great now!? Perhaps if marketing actually started pushing features customers cared about, rather than worrying about tartan plaid's, little i's, and core vs core ultra... they might do better, but alas, like so many groups at Intel, the company would be best served by dropping 70% of marketing! Then they could reduce the price of their chips a bit, and be more competitive! Perhaps they could publish some performance metrics... Oh God... they couldn't do that. They wouldn't want to promise any specific performance, everything must be totally fluid so customers can never know what they might get! Oh, I understand the reason, they had to make this as clear as they have the USB spec versions! Yes, in that they have succeeded... if you can call that success.

The obscurity helps retailers sell computers to the less inclined.

i3 = intel peasant i5 = intel noble i7 = intel king i9 = intel emperor Xeon = intel farmer

"If the goal is simplicity..." Gonna have to stop you there. The goal is the opposite of simplicity.

It's definitely more complicated... Normal user will be lost no matter what, but we advanced users will have to learn this new stupid naming...

I feel like I'm even more confused since watching the video.

3:42 as a bit of feedback please dont use that beep in future videos, nails on chalkboard type sound. Informative video if otherwise.

It appears that they're making this change to confuse the customers into buying archaic deprecated CPUs, kind of like how 14th gen is basically binned 13th gen.

This new branding is actually more confusing than the previous version.

Ah yes The old "competition gets too good, so we change our naming scheme to make it more conplicated for the average customer to compare equal products" move

Imagine using numbers inbetween 3, 5 and 7 instead of this CORE SUPER FUKKEN HYPER ULTRA for skue numbers.

I wonder why the I7 without ultra couldn't be intended for gaming. This is so confusing.. I understood the previous system perfectly and ordinary consumers were satisfied with the information - the newer the generation, the better.

The overlap of ultra and non ultra 5 & 7 is the biggest problem in my eyes. Are average customers going to know if the core 7 is a better chip than the ultra 5? If I was someone who only paid attention to tech every 3-5 years when building a new PC, I could definitely find myself confused, wondering if the ultea 5 was just the new i3 or if ultra 9 wasn't just bestest, but more like besterest. I think the improvements to the suffix have been traded for confusion in the branding.

*They should've replaced it with something more self explanatory.* Like: i3: Basic i5: Standard _(or something in the middle)_ i7: Premium i9: Ultra

I'm going to miss that branding. It just felt nostalgic and was a standard.

Even more confusing plus it seems like it’s almost impossible to tell when the chip was made now

Core 5 and 7 is confusing with Core Ultra 5 and 7. Why not just do, Core, Core 3, Core 5, Core 7, Core 9 and Core 11?

The suffix of h vs u is super scummy. Those models are sooooo different between eachother and the only difference is the last freaking letter

How will consumers know which processor is the "newest one on the market"? With no generational information, it sounds like a way to scam consumers into buying older chipsets.

I work retail, the only thing customer cares about is - is this laptop fast enough to do my stuff - while paying peanuts.

The reality is there are 2 kinds of users: For 90% of users, who don't play high performance 3D games, any processor (including lowly Celerons) from the last 10 years is more than enough. For the remaining 10% who need high fidelity 3D game performance, there is NO processor that is good enough. Intel would be much better off just labeling the processor for the 90% of users and show explicitly how long the battery should last between charges (which is what they really want to know).

So far, it's better than USB-IF naming conventions. Then again, anything can be better named than what USB-IF names.

So basically Intel is like: "let's make the naming scheme easier to understand by splitting one known lineup into TWO lineups nobody is used to". Facepalm

The fact the Celeron line had a longer lifespan than a CPU that actually has a use case is more surprising than those Intel CPUs with the AMD VEGA iGPUs.

Seriously … why not a simple branding ? YYQBB YY is the process release year. Q is the processor class (9,7,5,3,1) and BB the feature… (Yeah the 1 are for pentium / celeron)

I stopped track AMD Laptop CPUs after they started the "letter wheel" they created, all the 7520U \ 7540U \ 7730U etc, IDK what the difference between them without checking a spec table. Now Intel doing the same. it's so confusing.

I'm even more confused now. At first Riley said the move is to "remove confusion of generation", but on new naming it still have that "generation" number only restarting from 1 again. The only confusion general public feels about the old naming is why new generation doesn't directly translate to better performance, and that's not the "i"'s fault, but Intel's Marketing fault for naming a product with generation increment but with performance of generation decrement.

It is still confusing. In fact, it is even more confusing now.

The naming categorization is one thing, one also has to take into account clock speeds, and cores and threads, etc.. I just use Geekbench / Passmark and compare against something I already have.

I have never seen 1930s movie filters cause seizures, but... here we are.

Generation is probably the most important part of the cpu. Idk why they’re saying it’s not important.

Not surprised. I’ve had people contact me about a chip only to realize it doesn’t fit their computer. 🤦 😅😢

I built a tower pc with an intel i7 in the spring of 2011, almost 13 years ago, as the heart of my entertainment center. Since then I've added some upgrades but it still has the same cpu and has been used most days since I built it.

I don't think I've ever seen a tech quickie video this early!

Admittedly, the "i" naming scheme didn't make much sense to me either at first, I grew up in the OG Pentium era. But thankfully, these expensive rectangular bricks I've been carrying around helped me make sense of it.

If only Intel made decently priced processor's that didnt run as hot as lava instead of renaming their processors to something more confusing

So just as smart naming scheme as Mercedes Benz thought of after tossing the coupling of number= displacement

I’m guessing the “core ultra 5/7/9” processors will be unlocked for overclocking and the others won’t?

Not a word aboul the "Lake" nomenclature? Why assume more information? The scheme seems to be made up to obfuscate (the generation). Parallel "Core" and "Ultra Core" seems worse than just i3, i5 for productivity and general use and i7, i9 for more demanding applications.

So, if they got rid of the generational indicator because it was confusing, now as soon as there are multiple generations, there'll be no easy way to tell which of the 5 chips with the same name are better.

Right, the "generation" was confusing consumers. Nothing provides more clarity than to add 4 arbitrary digits and letters at the end of a generic "Core (Ultra) X" after 14 generations of relatively straightforward naming scheme; ...12th, 13th, 14th generation, followed by i3, i5, i7, i9. Why re-invent the wheel when it's spinning perfectly fine?

Noted: do not recommend "Intel Processor" to my friends. Good job, Intel. I used to put a barf emoticon just if the processor was Celeron or Pentium, and telling them to get an i3. This choice is based more on prejudice than on actual knowledge or experience with those lower end models, but the feedback seems quite positive after purchase.

If you're wondering how this will improve the experience for end users... it won't. Product segmentation like this is step 1. Step 2 is paywalling basic features that used to come standard with mid level products behind the more expensive new tiers. Stuff like hyperthreading, virtualization, or support for faster memory. It's how they hide greedy practices. Like everything that comes from publicly traded companies, it only gets worse.

The best way to compare the cpus is simple , stick in part number followed by" passmark " into search engine , check single thread and multicore thread performance , bigger is almost defo better :)

The technology branding will never be understood by non technology people and Intel knows that. This is about hiding older technology systems still on the shelf after many years making it harder to distinguish this older antiquated hardware from newer technology hardware in hopes people will still purchase the antiquated stuff on the shelf. Removing the “Gen” name and making this “marketing change” is meant to hide older processors making it more difficult in purchasing decisions for all people interested in buying the latest hardware., while still able to keep the price high or even higher.

It's been dead for awhile now the model numbers have been basically meanless for "generations"

No they did it with the sole intention of obfuscating which products are older generation

Is this paid content ?!

I want to know things that other people don't know

We world be telling our kids that in our days processor names had meaning

Apple’s Ms series chips so much better. M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, M3 Ultra. No need to add the binned or clock speed to the naming.

Intel is finally admitting that their chips weren't really changing each generation.

The most confusing part is that they have 5 and 7 in both the Core and Core Ultra lines. So how does the performance compare between Core 7 and Core Ultra 5 for example ?!? The former is from the lower line but with a higher number and the latter is from the performance line, but with a lower number. It was much cleaner with i3, i5, i7 and i9

Intel should've just named all their processors Aladeen

It would be a lot cleaner if they ditched the "Core". Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is just way to long. Intel Ultra 9 185H is a lot more readable.

All they could've done to alleviate the problem is to make the generational number less significant by placing it at the end instead of at the beginning or seperating it from the SKU number in some other way and drop the 5, 7 and 9 numbers entirely while at it since they don't signify anything anymore. As generations go, you'd still have people confusing that a slower newer gen chip is faster than an older higher end one because of the "series" still being at the beginning, + the whole "ultra" thing making things worse with how they've meshed it in with the 5 and 7. Surely something like "Intel Core 850H-14" instead of "core ultra 9 185h" would make more sense to a regular "bigger number better" consumer and take less time to explain than whatever the current stunt seems to be.

your intel 12th gen table was wrong because it said that the i5 12600 only had 6p cores and 0e cores but i have a 12600k and it has 6p cores and 4e cores. do intel make a locked 12600 or are they all unlocked? ive never seen a locked 600 series

They made things more complicated!

The new naming scheme is honestly more confusing. The existing naming scheme has a linear progression in performance classes going from i3>i5>i7>i9. The new naming scheme has two separate lineups with their own performance tiers that are similar to each other but not the same, and the small overlap they do have leads to more confusion. For instance, is a Core 7 better than a Core Ultra 5? If not, why is the one with the lower number better? What makes an "Ultra" processor, to begin with, and how does that differentiate it from a non-Ultra one?

Is Intel part of the USB Implementers Forum by any chance?

this now just got confusing

I think they should just go with the release year and give them names related to their use case. From best to worse: 2024 - Spoiled Rich Kid 2024 - Data Center 2024 - Corporate Server 2024 - Xstream Gamer 2024 - Creater 2024 - Gamer 2024 - Xecutive 2024 - Prosumer 2024 - Dev 2024 - Student 2024 - Associate 2024 - Value 2024 - Budget 2024 - IOT

“Simplify things”, or more like hide (aka bury) inferior things? 🤔

I never thought that bit of the code was the SKU. Does SKU "900" really make sense? They might have stock of 13900 and 14900 at the same time...

Do you buy your t-shirts new for this?

The ones that understand perfectly the actual naming will understand even if it was the most difficult system posible and people that don’t understand just will never understand. A lot of people buy cars and don’t know how many cilindres the cars has, it is the same with cpus.

I suggest, i.e.: Intel 4C8T-AD ... Intel 6C12T-BL ... Intel 12C14T-CS ... code: 4C8T = 4 cores, w/hyper 8 threads, and A = 2GHz - 3GHz clock range, B = 3GHz - 4GHz, C = 4GHz - 5+GHz, and D = Desktop, L = Laptop, S = Server, E = embedded ... etc.,etc.,etc. ... combinations of those designators should cover the product line; add or subtract designators to accommodate future dev.

I just bought a laptop with a Core 7 Ultra processor. I hesitated between the 2024 ultra model and last year’s i7 model that was a few hundred € cheaper. I’m glad I didn’t listen to the vendor who indicated very small difference between the models, since subsequent googling showed the ultra chip is twice as fast, generates less heat and has >25% longer battery life than last year’s i7. It also has an Evo badge, which must mean something (which the vendor could not explain)..

That was a brilliant move calling an entire lineup of processors simply... processors. This will of course lead to a lot of people knowing exactly what they are looking for. While leads me to a conclusion on how many "cores" they have. The core and the ultra will be an amazing move, imagine this, buying a laptop and you want a 7 because its higher than 5 and 3 of course, you will be presented with 3 types of intel core 7s in fact a low voltage, a mid range and a high range (all of these labeled with numbers) , the high range core and the low range ultra will have almost identical computing power but doesnt matter, ultra sounds better so im gonna pay more for it. Sounds like a brilliant move.

The title made it sound like Intel wasn't going to make the 7 series CPU's anymore. Changing the branding isn't exactly killing it.

is the core ultra 5 better or worse than the core 7?

TBF I can see how this might help: the core i is confusing nowadays compared to 7 years ago! But, they didn't change much to make them easier understood.... still has the NAME + NUMBER + GEN + SKU + LETTER So what's the point?

More confusing. What's the difference between normal 5 vs Ultra 5? It seems that the purpose of name change is not to clarify distinction, but to confuse people further by obfuscating old CPU and cheap sku as good one.

I don't know how the old scheme works other than that a higher i-number is generally better but from what was presented here it seems to not get a lot less confusing the the new scheme. It seems that generation gets renamed as series and those numbers and the sku numbers get sort of reset but otherwise it'll be the same. I'm not sure how this is going to make it any less confusing except for the ultra/not-ultra thing which people that don't know the meaning of will probably want to get the ultra version anyway because it sounds like it's better even if the better that it is won't do much for their use-case..

Madness. Will someone please get those marketing types out of the room?

The good old days, when the 486 followed the 386. The 4th generation followed the 3th generation. First digit is generation. Suffix is variant. The confusion started with the Pentium. And then with the i3, i5, i7 series... first digit is a variant, generation comes later in the numbering scheme. But it went totally wrong in my opinion with the 10th generation. Now, I have to look at the length of the number to determine whether I have to look at one or two digits to determine the generation, Therefore I'd say a new scheme was long overdue. And let's hope they do introduce a new one once the new generation counter reaches 10 again. Nevertheless... it was time for a new scheme, indeed, but whether this new one is simpler? Perhaps another question to be asked, do we really need that many variants?

Though it may seem confusing, the term “co-ultra” essentially implies that if you’re a gamer and you enjoy enhancing your laptop/desktop performance, which I plan to do in the future. Despite already owning a gaming laptop, I intend to purchase a desktop with the Core Ultra i-9 to future-proof it and ensure optimal gaming capabilities.

I'm all for simplifying branding to understand what product is being sold, but Intel took an unwieldy but well worn branding system and just swung the pendulum in the opposite direction picking a new unwieldy branding system.

this is makign my pc even more obsolete

Okay I am confused, So we are talking about Lunar Lake or Meteorite Lake Or Alder Lake ?

In the thumbnail, you look so much like Ian from smosh that I thought, what is Ian doing over here.

Old naming is pretty simple and understandable. People, who wants just "i7" they still won't understand the difference between the 10th generation and the 15th, for example

I think they are keeping it complicated, why the H and U and also relative performance encoded in both the brand level and the number? Also, rumours are that the U SKUs of the "second generation" Core Ultra will be Meteor Lake dies rather than Arrow Lake, are they going to do like AMD and encode the core uarch in the number, or are they just going to hide it, like they did for pretty much all generations since 13th, which used Alder Lake dies?

I dont understand what was so hard with the old branding. The bare bones of it is i# (gen number) So i could quickly say I9 13 gen and people would quickly know i have the top tier CPU and the year it came out.

And here I had finally come to understand their naming former scheme

Changing it to make it "easier" for none techie, that used to ask their techie friends, is not just making it harder for everyone to figure it out. Techies will figure it out, but changing the naming convention doesn't make things easier.

This is because people caught on to them branding 12th gen parts with 13th gen part numbers. That's a thin line to walk on being false advertising. This rename allows them to avoid that, and make it more confusing for buyers.

Note: This rebranding only applies to laptops and not for desktops.

This sounds like the usb 3.0 and above rebranding scam, where i'm likely to get more wattage for the extra dollar that probally may not need for such a port; While its now a lottery of if it actually supports the higher speeds I both wanted and expected to receive when investing in such a product. I say its likely not needed for the higher wattage from a usb, as more powerful external devices typically have their own dedicated plug.

Nothing like taking the old branding, which only needed a handy-dandy explainer video, and simplifying it so all it needs is a handy-dandy explainer video.