Intel chips get new logos, star treatment

Intel has introduced a new and flashier set of logos for their consumer-level processors and processor-cum-chipset combos, along with a star-rating system that may generate more trouble than guidance. The new logos feature the familiar Intel logo above the marketing names of Core i7, Core 2, Centrino, Centrino 2, Atom, Celeron …

[Dive Fox]

Wow...

Isn't it every time a company rebrands like this, they're either in financial trouble or experiencing slowing sales.

Also, how is AMD going to respond to this? A smiley-faced rating system? A row of CPUs, indicating how many of whatever CPU it is it takes to match a Core i7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really a rebrand

Just trying to be a little clearer on what's actually in the box. I think except for the star crap, it's actually a good marketing idea to tell the people what they're buying.

Now where can I get a Core i7 sticker for my eeePC 4g?!

[reader]

Think web 2.0

Each CPU line will include a link to it's facebook page where you can judge it's quality by the number of friends it has.

[Paul Stephenson]

6 stars?

Maybe the next round of chips wil be 6 stars, increasing each time over the coming years till the front of your pc looks like the corner of the american flag!

Surely at least one person in their marketing department realised the reclassification issue......

[Brutus]

Casino Chips

The star rating will obviously have to work one a casino-chip style multipler - five ordinary stars will be replaced by one blue star, five blues by one silver and so on. Personally, I think this won't confuse anyone at all and it will help 'bling up' the stickers over time.

[Alexis Vallance]

Can't read em

Why is the 'i7' and '2' text so poorly visible?

It's hidden in the gloss reflection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Confusion

Am I the only one who finds the whole Intel naming thing confusing these days?

Back in the day you had 486s, SX was the budget, DX the full bodied, DX/2 or DX/4.

Then we had the Pentium 1,2,3 etc, with the Celeron the budget.

Now we have Pentiums and Cores with "2" or "i7" and Celerons too, I feel like I missed the memo. If Pentrium is the budget, then what is the Celeron?

Just give me a processor!

[Michael Necaise]

@confusion

Currently Pentiums are a core2 duo's and Celerons are a core2 solo (single core), in both cases at lower clock speeds and with less L2 cache than the Core2 branded version. You didn't miss any memo -- these things are, and have been for some years now, a moving target.

[Jay]

@Confusion

Me too! The fountain of all knowledge has a handy table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 which shows how x86 chips ahve evolved and been named.

[Camilla Smythe]

Buh buh buh Why not do this

Have a bar thing with three colours. Errr uhmmm ooooh Blue Green and Red, or maybe in a different order.

The Blue bit is for how much processing power is in there so a Two Core running at the same clock speed as a One Core would have a Blue bit twice as long. Then there would be a fiddle factor multiplier wotsit for different clock speeds and one for extra architecture doodads so you end up with the poper overall amount of blue.

The Green bit would be for the amount, type and speed of cache with similar fiddles and then the Red bit would be for the other thing like whatever else there is that makes processors fruity.

You could present the three colours as a bar chart for quick comparison depending on what the customer might think is important and then have a final bar where they sit on top of each other so the length is an overall figure of merit.

A bit of colour blending artistry type stuff to make things look prettier along with a hologram effect and the job's a good one.

[kevin biswas]

Is it more than 1.5ghz ?

If so, give it enough ram, turn off all the snarking window animations, shovel out all the startup-vampires with 'msconfig', uninstall norton (don't even MENTION vista) and then it will do for most workday tasks.

I must admit to being pretty baffled already about Intel CPU's, the 'Dual Core' vs 'Core 2 Duo' thing took me months to get a grip on. This new star rating wossit looks set to increase rather than decrease my bafflement.

Am just getting too old to give a shit ?, or too stupid ?, or did processors get good enough about 5 years ago to not be of interest any more ? Wouldn't it run better with an extra gig'o'ram instead ?

If you araldite a plastic handle to the die of a pentium pro 200 it makes an excellent dog-brush.

[Law]

Oh Dear

Keeping up with processor comparisons and speeds is going on my Murtaugh list as of this rebrand.... and I'm not even 30 yet... fml