There's a value in that too - people know immediately that i7 is powerful, and everyone [that cares] already knows that processors are renewed frequently. Though yeah, perhaps something like 7i1, 7i2 would've been better. Apple solved this nicely (given the naming is confirmed) with M1X.
That's fine if you're buying new. Is there an i5 that beats an older i7 in performance? When buying a used laptop or desktop, how much extra research do I need to do to figure out which processor I'm actually getting? There's been 13 years of i7's.
>>Is there an i5 that beats an older i7 in performance?
Of course. I got a new laptop last year with a Core i5-10300H, and it easily beats my desktop i7-4790K, despite the same number of cores, in every workload.
UserBenchmark is your friend for this kind of thing really:
It makes sense for software release versions, but I think this lacks marketing prowess.
Consider; “hey man check out my new M1 machine!” Versus: “hey man check out my M1 2021.04”
Even with the Core series it’s short and sweet.
“10th gen. Core i7” still sounds futuristic and always will.
Ryzen 7 also.
Honestly I think folks here are overthinking this stuff. It’s easy enough to compare the specs on a 10th gen cpu vs 8th gen. I think that’s easier than comparing different product names.
For instance, just by the names: Pentium 5 versus Core i5 it’s not quite clear unless folks were old enough to remember Pentiums. Whereas, everyone knows current generation has better processing than previous generation.
Noone would ever say it like that. They would simply say:
“hey man check out my new M1 machine!” And if it happened to come at a generation shift the context would make it obvious if it was the old generation at a bargain or the brand new generation. (or that the person saying it couldn't care less about specs and generations)
Now if you would buy a used computer, or would like to compare your current i7 to the latest i7 - then you would take notice. How much difference is there between a i5 2021.04 vs. i7 2016.8 ?
That is dead simple to google and reason about.
Compare that to: So what computer do you have? Oh, it is an i7 with 16 GB of RAM. I have no idea what decade that machine is from. And noone remembers the specific version, and if they do I have no idea how to parse it anyway.
Speaking of Ryzen, I see everyone attacking Intel for their naming especially now that the generation is 2 digits, but AMD's situation is a mess too. The Ryzen 7 5800x is built on Zen 3 architecture. I know the numbering scheme and still sometimes mix up the generation of processor with the generation of architecture.
Also, given that AMD copied Intel's 3/5/7/9 numbering, I'll be interested to see if in a few years they're selling a 10800x.
Exactly. This proves the point I'm making. No one - even Apple with the best supply chain management in the industry - wants the version scheme you suggest.
Vendors want version numbers to push upgrades to consumers. They don't want to deal with demand forcasting for something with a limited time of life though.
Nobody said that they have to make that versioning public and shout it from the rooftops.
Users do use the informal versioning that I mentioned, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to differentiate the products. I've heard "MacBook Pro 2015" a million times.
And a date <<is>> a version number. It also nicely auto-increments to prove to your customers that the latest thing is better than the old one.
Doodad Pro, 2021 edition. It's not that hard, as I was saying.
The alternative is the garbage that everyone is doing. WH-1000XM3, really?!?
Cars do this. BWM 3-series or WV Golf has existed with that same name since forever, despite getting smaller or generational upgrades every year. Enthusiasts refer to them by model year. Of course you also have the engine size as the final variable.
Nah. BMW used to have sane numbering, as did Mercedes. Nowadays its all made up bullshit. 28i? you might thing straight six 2.8 Liter, well its a 2.0 Turbo. M550d? 3 Liter. Merc E63? 6.2 Liter. Dont even get me started on Porshes non-turbo/electric Turbos, or Mercedes 4 door "coupes".
This was a situation I ran into a lot when buying simple Intel-based nuc's for family. It got more complex when the difference between and i5 and i7 got really close due to thermal constraints.
But then you have different i7 variants with one having a different letter in the name which makes it just half as powerful because it's an extra energy-conserving mobile CPU.
I'm not into hardware but I have a rough overview, though whenever I'm supposed to help someone choose a laptop I only see a whole page with dozens of products and the only difference are a few numbers in the CPU serial number and some other weird product names and I simply have no idea what to say. I fully understand people who just go "I take this one because it has a nice color" - a layperson simply has no chance at understanding the difference, and good luck finding a store where the employees know more.
I never owned an Apple computer and I can still tell you on the spot which category of Macbook is better and more expensive, and why. Might have to do with the devices having normal names instead of alphanumeric strings that probably came from a password generator.
It is very confusing because typically the previous generation’s i7 performs the same as the current gen’s i5, within the same tdp tier, and i5’s from a higher tdp can vastly outperform i7’s from a lower tdp within the same generation. Typically at any one time there are two or three processor generations in actual laptops being sold, as well as three or more tdp classes, so there is basically no good way of knowing how different laptops in the store compare performance-wise except by looking up benchmarks.
