Author Topic: Intel's Atom is on a collision course with Core—and everybody loses  (Read 2988 times)

Offline bfarmer

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/2040752/intels-atom-is-on-a-collision-course-with-core-and-everybody-loses.html#tk.twt_http://www.pcworld.com/article/2040752/intels-atom-is-on-a-collision-course-with-core-and-everybody-loses.html




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Instead of offering a simple answer—“This is our ARM killer, Atom”—it appears that Intel’s response will be something like, “Oh, you’ll want a Pentium, then. No, not the old one. The new one. See, there’s the model number right there. Oh, and you can go with a Celeron, too. No, they’re better. See, they’re part of the Silvermont family. What’s a Silvermont? Here, take some brochures...”


It is getting harder and harder to follow Intel's chip offerings. There are far too many choices. We had Pentium, then Pentium D, then Core Duos and Quads, then The Core I series. But then there are also a bunch of odd Pentium offerings scattered in there.

Offline Parrish

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That is one thing AMD has done fairly well the last few years- clean up their CPU offerings so it makes sense.  Especially concerning the A series APU's.  The AM3 line can still be a bit confusing- but not nearly as bad as Intel. 
For the A series they have the A4, A6, A8, and A10 lines.  The higher the number the better the chip.  Easy peasy. 
Although I do have to give them a thumbs down on the numbering- it's meant to make people think it means the number of cores.  But that's incorrect.  The A4 is a dual core, A6 a dual or quad core, A8 and A10 both quad cores.

But, for the non-technical person, the number system does work.  You just have to not think about the number of cores (besides, does it really matter when it comes right down to it?). 
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Offline bfarmer

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That is one thing AMD has done fairly well the last few years- clean up their CPU offerings so it makes sense.  Especially concerning the A series APU's.  The AM3 line can still be a bit confusing- but not nearly as bad as Intel. 
For the A series they have the A4, A6, A8, and A10 lines.  The higher the number the better the chip.  Easy peasy. 
Although I do have to give them a thumbs down on the numbering- it's meant to make people think it means the number of cores.  But that's incorrect.  The A4 is a dual core, A6 a dual or quad core, A8 and A10 both quad cores.

But, for the non-technical person, the number system does work.  You just have to not think about the number of cores (besides, does it really matter when it comes right down to it?).

Sounds like a good move. Intel should drop most of its desktop offerings, and stick with the Core I series, with Atom (and now Haswell) for mobile applications. For more powerful mobile offerings they could have a core I series with M suffix. Although from preliminary reading Haswell may be as good as the Core I series.