Intel
Intel often makes use of CES to fill out the processor lineups that it launched late the 12 months earlier than, and that hasn’t modified this 12 months. The firm has introduced a full vary of 14th-generation Core desktop CPUs, some new 14th-generation Core CPUs for high-end gaming and workstation laptops, and the primary non-Ultra chips to bear the new “Core 3/5/7” branding that sheds the generational branding completely. We’ll go over the updates shortly.
But my primary takeaway, as a long-time observer of processor branding, is that Intel had made its new naming system much more complicated for individuals who really wish to know what sort of processor they’re getting.
Intel mentioned in October that it was sticking with the 14th-generation branding for its new desktop CPUs as a result of they have been so just like the Thirteenth-generation chips (all of them use the identical underlying Raptor Lake structure, itself a minor revision of the Twelfth-gen Alder Lake). It makes a point of sense that it’s being prolonged to the HX-series laptop computer chips, as a result of these have at all times been desktop silicon repackaged for laptop computer use. So far so good.
But what’s irritating is that the new Series 1 Core 7, Core 5, and Core 3 chips are additionally based mostly on a clock pace bump of Raptor Lake, somewhat than the all-new Meteor Lake structure used within the Core Ultra CPUs Intel introduced a month in the past. The Core 7 150U, Core 5 120U, and Core 3 100U share the entire identical key specs with final 12 months’s Thirteenth-generation U-series processors, together with CPU core depend (two P-cores and both 4 or 8 E-cores, relying on the chip), RAM assist, GPU, and energy use. They additionally lack new Meteor Lake options like an onboard NPU and Intel Arc graphics.
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We aren’t even going to speak in regards to the phrase “Intel Core Processors (Series 1) U-series Processors,” a sequence of seven phrases that features each “sequence” and “processors” twice.
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There’s nothing actually new in regards to the Core platform, in comparison with the Thirteenth-generation U-series chips.
Intel
The distinction is that the Series 1 chips have incrementally boosted their peak clock speeds, and the Intel Iris Xe built-in GPU branding has been retired (these all merely have “Intel Graphics,” and Intel would not point out whether or not the variety of graphics execution models has modified). Other than that, they appear to be roughly as totally different from Intel’s Thirteenth-generation CPUs as the opposite processors within the 14th-generation Core lineup, which is to say, “not very.”
None of that is to indicate that the Series 1 Core chips are scandalous or unprecedented; for higher or worse, Intel and different firms launch tweaked variations of outdated chips as “new” ones on a regular basis. But to announce a significant generational branding change, and then to withhold the new branding from some merchandise as a result of they’re too just like older ones, and then to use the new branding to different merchandise which are simply as just like older ones is bewildering. This is similar firm that not too long ago constructed a slide deck accusing AMD of enjoying branding video games designed to mislead folks in regards to the age of its processors. You can, no less than, search for the “Ultra” label to reliably separate the all-new chips from the outdated ones. But it’s not instantly clear how this new branding scheme is healthier or much less complicated than the outdated one.
But I digress.
Chips with the new Core branding will arrive in laptops starting this quarter. Here is what it’s worthwhile to find out about the remainder of Intel’s 14th-generation chips.