“Taking a page from automobile marketers, Intel Corp. will now assign model numbers to its chips and eliminate measurements of raw speed from its product names, the world’s largest chip maker said on Friday,” Daniel Sorid reports for Reuters. “The move marks a break from decades of chip marketing strategy, and comes at a time when Intel is trying to pack into its chips more features, such as security and multi-tasking, that fall outside what has long been the primary measurement of raw speed — the number of megahertz or gigahertz.”
“The shift, one analyst said, will better position Intel’s newest notebook computer chip, the Pentium M, which has lower ‘clock speeds’ than other Intel mobile chips. But the new marketing strategy could also confuse computer shoppers used to treating chip speed as the only marker of performance,” Sorid reports. “Intel’s new model numbers give each Intel processor brand a series number. Within desktop computer chips, for instance, the low-end Celeron chip will be given the 300 series, the high-end Pentium 4 will be given the 500 series label, and its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition will be given the 700 series.”
Sorid reports, “Within each series, a higher number — a 350 series versus a 330 series, for example — will signify a broader array of features in the chip. While chip speed will no longer be included in the chip’s name, Intel is not eliminating chip speed from the description, and said personal computer makers are unlikely to strike speed from their own advertising.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Now that it no longer serves their purpose, Intel smashes the MHz Myth to pieces. 95% of the world is in for quite a revelation that they’ve been played as suckers and sold a bill of goods.
hello there,
another angle to all this is the fear of the G5. Now that the G5 is already outperforming the P4 even at lower clock speeds, they are changing the game so consumers really, really have no idea which is faster any more.
Me thinks this is a show of fear on the Intel part. They know that IBM and G5 are going to catch up, so what do they do? They change the game. Well, now everyone will have more numbers to keep in mind, and as you suggested, everyone will get confused.
Not only do you specify the model number of the computer, you also have to specify the specific processor number which is not related to GHz. Also, now that the numbers mask the actual processor clock speed, it’s no longer possible to easily keep track of their progress in terms of time. No more so many MHz in 6 months, but now it’s oh – another increase in model number. Well, what merits an increase of 10 or 20 or more?
Very interesting here. I think the G5 is more of a threat than any of us have thought thus far.
What? Something outperforming a p4?!?! Surely you jest. The Pentium 3 beat the pentium 4 up until very recently, in fact, EVERYTHING beat it at the same clock speed.
And shouldn’t IBM and Apple keep posting increases in the speed of their new chips?
This will make the consumer wonder what the speed of the INTEL chip is, and give Apple an advantage in the psychological warfare that has been going on for years.
I have to guess that Apple has lost sales to people who only compared speeds, and thus went with a Pee-Sea. Now the Macintosh will look all the more desirable, and ‘worth more’ if the customer has to pay more for a Mac.
dee vee
Well, until recently, Intel finally hits the wall of speed as they attempt to keep the 4.0 ghz w/ promises. Can’t meet that, change of plan. People will never realized they been living in a lie. I always thought overall performance is what makes a machine robusting. My last PC was PII 500 5 years ago, since then, mac converted
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Intel inside
Liar inside
Your computer may not be running as fast as you think it does.
Haah hah <nelson’s voice from the simpsons> Intel is slow.
>95% of the world is in for quite a revelation that >they’ve been played as suckers and sold a bill of goods.
Or, more accurately, Intel will now try to get 95% of the world to buy the same line of bullshit mac heads have buying for the last several years.
(Watch the mac heads–“Megahertz don’t matter! Megahertz don’t matter! Megahertz don’t matter! Ooohhh, 2 GHz Mac, pretty!”)
Only one problem with your theory there “OJ”, it isn’t “bullshit”. What you and the other lemmings have been believing for years is the only bullshit here. Hell, Intel is even admitting as much now…
Real reason is that people aren�t buying PC when they bring out faster processors, so why accelerate bringing out the processors? They will just drip them out
Ouch! Oooch! Someone called me a “mac head”!! OJ: I know I am, but what are you?
You know, when Apple blew it with its product naming scheme, it at least had enough sense to use thousands instead of hundreds (6100, 7100, 8500, 9500). Starting off in the hundreds doesn’t give Intel much room, given how quickly they update their chips.
Then again, if they run out of numbers quickly, it’ll be a much shorter time before they realize they need to dump this strategy.
It shows what a tremendous opportunity Apple has. Performance is what matters and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s performance that fuels better GUI’s and innovative new applications and features. That’s why Apple’s use of multiple processors, Altivec Vector Unit and Quartz Extreme OPENGL hardware pipelining makes the OS X such an awesome multi-tasking and solid system.
With the new 970FX and this year breaking the 3GHz barrier, OS X should rocket another couple of years ahead of the as yet to be released Longhorn and any other OS. What’s interesting is that MSFT’s Longhorn reportedly needs 4GHZ as a minimum, that’s not happening any time soon.
Nobody’s in for a revelation. 95% of those who notice the change will think that MHz was totally valid as the only speed measure, right until recent Intel-only breakthroughs changed that.
This definitely creates an added opportunity for Apple, assuming IBM can really follow-through on the expected speed increases. Sure, Apple under-stated the significance of clock speed the last few years (what else could it do given Moto’s failure to keep up?). And, now, many Macophiles are deciding that clock speed matters after all. In the end, the reality that clock speed matters to SOME extent (even if there are other important features), and that Apple is getting competitive again, will make a difference. Consumers tend to focus on the things that are easily measured and quantified–clock speed and price.
Some sort of oversight commitee or international consortium should devise a standard rating system. This is just unfair to the consumer. I am not an engineer but it seems to me that if it was done right it would be based on a series of standard tasks that are performed on the computer and the performance of the chip doing each of these tasks. Each task would have like a rating from 1 to 10. Each chip then would have a table showing the performance and the total of all the points.
“Intel will now try to get 95% of the world to buy the same line of bullshit mac heads have buying for the last several years.”
Hmmm. AMD stopped pushing megahertz years ago, now Intel is admitting that clock-speed is not as significant as sheeple were led to believe, but you think it’s a line of bullshit? Obviously you’re smarter than all those tens of thousands of engineers. Drop the “Opinionated” part; you’re just a jerk.
Megahertz does and doesn’t matter at the same time. If you compare the same family and generations, megahertz is a good indication of the chip speed. You just need to be careful interpreting the number and you also have to remember that performance does not scale linearly. Clock speed starts to lose its significance when you cross to chip revisions (e.g. adding more cache, pipelines) and generations (Pentium III, Pentium IV). Most of all, clock speed becomes less of an indication of a chip performance when you go completely to a different architecture (PPC, MIPS, SPARC, Pentium). So, whether it matters or not depends on the context. So, yeah, megahertz matters when people want a 3GHz PPC G5 because they compare it to a 2GHz PPC G5. But megahertz means nothing when you discuss the performance of a 2GHz AMD chip and 3.2 GHz Intel chip.
The megahertz myth comes from laymen not understanding these comparisons. To them, 3>2>1. I suspect that they would even prefer numbers like a 60 Watts chip to a 15 Watts chip.
Apple should start using their own number system:
G3=500 series
G4=700 series
G5=900 series
that’s right … screw Intel at their own numbering marketing ploy. =)
Almost, edd1e. I don’t remember there being any G3 models any more, but the G4’s should be the 900 series, and the G5’s should be a higher number, just so the masses will think “Oh, this one has an even higher number, it must be better than ANY of the Intels.”
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where’s the G5 laptop?
the desktop’s dead, long live the desktop.
P.S. Lots of trivia news: Sony started a music website…
where’s the beef?
how about naming them:
fast
faster
fastests
>AMD stopped pushing megahertz years ago, now Intel is admitting that >clock-speed is not as significant as sheeple were led to believe, but >you think it’s a line of bullshit?
Yeah, it is bullshit. I’m completely laughing my ass off right now, to tell the truth. “Intel is admitting…” Hah. Intel is laying off clock speed for the same reason AMD and Moto did–they’ve hit a wall, and now would rather talk about something else.
Don’t get me wrong–simply comparing clock speeds without looking at any other aspect of the system isn’t terribly useful. Easiest example is that the early G3’s were considerably faster than 603e’s running at the same clock speed.
However, the real ideological mac nuts–and boy do they fill this place to the rafters–certainly appear to believe that clock speed means nothing at all, and will happily explain how a 450 MHz G4 is faster than a 2 GHz P3, etc. and benchmarks showing year old Intel chips outperforming dual G4 Macs were imaginary.
So no, Intel is “admitting” anything except that they’re hitting a wall on clock speed, the competition is catching up, and Intel wants to change the subject.
This is more proof that Intel has hit the wall with the x86 architecture. Chip temperatures have reached boiling point and now alternative means of boosting performance have to be utilised. Do not be surprised if dual processor and dual core CPUs become the next big thing in the world of Windows. CPU cache will surelly reach unprecedented levels and Altivec-style vector units will become a standard feature for all the new x86 processors.
Last I looked, OJ, this forum was called MacDailyNews. Surprising it is filled to the rafters with real idealogical Mac nuts…I’m sure there is a PC World forum out there somewhere.
Yup, it’s Macdailynews. And some of us look at this site daily (or more) looking for Mac news. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
I also read the Philadelphia Inquirer every day, looking for…news about Philadelphia.
There are people who write into the Inquirer who think Philadelphia needs higher taxes; I take those people about as seriously as I take the folks here that think a Mac can out process a PC running at twice the clock speed. (By the same token I’d be shocked if a Mac didn’t outprocess a PC running at the same clock speed–clock speed isn’t everything, but only the nuts here think it doesn’t mean anything.)
I thought Apple was BMW and Mercedes put together. Well, if Intel is BMW, then Apple is Mercedes. And if I’m going to let my loved ones behind a keyboard, it had better be crash-proof!
But the Hire is so Macintosh, and doesn’t seem Intel at all:
http://www.bmwfilms.com
Who cares what Intel calls their chips? Isnt this a Mac new site? Megaherts has never had anything to do with Mac/PC choices over the years – it was all about OS compatibility. MDN is a moaning bunch of old grannies.