I think everyone commenting on this article suffers from the same problem: after years of dealing with marketing naming conventions such as these, there is a specific area of gray matter in our brains tailored to interpreting these conventions.

We're part of a very small group that actually knows what this stuff means. The Dell and Walmart crowd still asks, "why didn't they just call it the pentium 5?" and still asks for clarification, "Do the bigger numbers mean it's faster?"

This is why our economy is in ruins. People felt they were stupid by not understanding the naming scheme, declared themselves "bad at computers" and bought a smart phone instead.

Nothing better than changing naming based on obscure vague specification every 5 months, right? Well AMD and intel can't be wrong so it must be right.

Which reminds me, isn't it time nvidia and ATI changes the name of all their old products again? There is a risk now somebody on the planet gets an overview in his/her mind and we can't have that.

wow core i7, core i5, and now core i3.
core i5 is a crippled version of core i7 with a new socket, and core i3 is a crippled version of the already crippled core i5
what a humongous mess. i hope intel fanboys enjoy this.

Ugh, marketing and branding.

I hope that Intel has got over disabling technologies like virtualisation, now that Windows 7 practically requires it for XP mode.

boycott intel for abusing consumers!

I'll say it:

CPU marketing is BS. There is no reason for 20 different versions of a processor. I can understand the rating for Ghz based on load but seriously there is no need for 8 different versions of a processor with XYZ cache, bandwidth, etc. It's not flexibility, scalability, it's marketing noise.

Core 7i X,Y,Z in various Ghz
Core 5i A,B,C in vartious Ghz

There is no reason to have 8 different Core5i processors with different L1,L2,L3 cache, bus speeds, etc. It is needless carrot and stick baiting.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's just single, dual, and quad core labels, kind of like Core Solo, Core Duo, and Core 2 Quad. Then they might dump Pentium dual-core and Celeron brands for lower end Nehalem/Lynnfield/Westmere derivatives.

I sincerely doubt it will be any indication of "features." Just look at the mess they've made of the Xeon Nehalems. You need a chart just to tell what's a dual or quad-core, what has hyper threading and turbo mode, what the turbo mode does, the amount of cache, the memory standard...lordy!

Um people.. your being nitwits.

The i3 i5 and i7 branding is simply so the walmart and dell crowd can at a glance tell what zone a computer is in. They cant tell by the 920 767 and 2525 blah blah blah numbers but a simple single number can do it for them.

Its not about features its simply about where the cpu winds up most times. What kind of system it winds up in.

I think this isn't really that bad. I figure they'll use the model numbers to differentiate inside each Core iX level

i7 ALL - HT, VT
i7 900's - quad core, triple channel
i7 700's - quad core, dual channel
i7 500's - dual core, dual channel

i5 ALL - no HT, VT
i5 600's - quad core, dual channel
i5 400's - dual core, dual channel

(totally guessing on the model numbering)

And so on and so forth. Now, what is f-ed up is having Core 2 Quad 8400's some with VT, some without. Why not call it 8401, or 8450 or some crap. Hell, even nVidia will give you a new model number for just bumping the clock a little. Recently overheard at nvidia factory - "Somebody sneezed on this batch? New model number!"

Several questions still remain: How many freakin' Diamonds will these processors get?

Looks like Intel is copying BMW, who also offer 3-, 5- and 7-series products all with multiple performance options.

OTOH, General Motors had Chevy/Potiac/Olds, at times all selling basically the same product with a few styling changes. At least Intel's branding makes more sense than that.

I'll take that smooth-ridin' Quad-Core Fleetwood Brougham, please. In black if ya got it.

This is the second or third time intel has simplified their marketing names. The large number of different processors made by intel make it almost impossible for anybody to know all the features of all the processors made. Newegg lists 34 processors from intel right now. I didn't take the time to see how many are duplicates though. I almost think going back to the good old days of processor family and clock speed as names would simplify things.

Sigh. What's really sad is we technical folk expect products to be named based on physical or functional differences. What I think Bill Calder is saying is that the naming conventions will be based instead on Marketing considerations. I guess this is good job security for techies, we will spend lots of time explaining all this to customers.

- The Mad Duke

Clear as mud. Whoever does their product differentiation needs to be fired.

It depends on how consistent they are with these "modifiers." If they always mean the same thing relative to one another (i5 has the same number of cores but less memory bandwidth than i7, i3 has fewer cores but MCM graphics) then it might not be too bad from a mass-messaging perspective. The current situation has been badly confused from the start (when they decided to use "Core" for the last of the Pentium Ms and then extend it across the "real" Cores and on into Nehalem, and then compound it with absurdly stacked qualifiers like "Core 2 Duo")

It's not going to give the level of detail that enthusiasts/professionals want, but it's not aimed at us anyway. We're still going to be picking apart which models have VT and Hyperthreading and whatever, and no broad "brand" -- even with some limited set of modifiers -- is going to help with that level of detail.

But I suspect that no matter how clearly-defined the boxes are when Intel Marketing first sets them out, the company's penchant for permuting features and spinning off derivatives for every market niche will make a hash of it in fairly short order.

I suppose VT will be a part of the modifier