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Comment by dataking | Hacker News Reader

This looks horribly complicated compared to the naming schemes deemed sufficient by AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, etc.

AMD is no saint here. Knowing whether a CPU is Zen 1, 1+, 2, or 3 from its model number basically requires memorization.

Zen: 1200, 2300U, 2400G, 3200U

Zen+: 1200AF, 2600E, 3200G, 3300U

Zen2: 3100, 4300G, 4300U, 5500U

Zen3: 5600X, 5400U

Nvidia neither. For 20-series had 2060, 2060 Super, 2060 Ti, and 2060 KO. Which of those is “fastest”? I can’t remember.

Apple neither. The iPad’s naming succession went something like: iPad 2, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad (5th gen), iPad (6th gen) + iPad Air (3rd gen).

Microsoft neither. Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One (!?), Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X. (Seriously MS, wtf.)

Really the only sanity I see is Sony PlayStation: PS, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5. They even re-released the PS as PS one after the PS2 was released.

I was about to reply that you needed to mention the Xbox, but you edited just in time!

Still, at any moment in time, it can be hard to decide on what product you want.

With PS2 you got PS1 backwards compatibility. With PS3, you got PS1 and PS1... if you got the original 60GB. But then the 40/80GB were released without it.

With PS4, they updated with PS4 Pro. And now there's PS5 and Digital Edition. This isn't as bad as I believe the specs are the same and the disk drive is the only difference.

But now Xbox Series S and X actually have a big difference in performance in addition to the disk drive! As someone that wants top performance but doesn't want the drive... ugh. Maybe the drives should be accessories... but consoles are too much like PCs already!

Indeed Sony can get a bit muddied within generations, especially with the PS3 as they had to cut cost a lot from 1st gen. At least “PS4” vs. “PS4 Pro” feels clear which is “better” vs. MS’s S vs. X (one is a sedan and the other an SUV, right??) or Intel’s smattering of suffixes.

Up until a few years ago Intel's naming scheme was actually really simple.

iX-YZZZ => consumer SKU. X = tier. Y = generation. ZZZ = higher is better. Ends with M? Mobile.

EX-ZZZZ vY => server/workstation SKU. X = 3 entry-level, same socket as consumers. X = 5 main-stream SKUs for dual-socket servers. X = 7 high-end SKUs for quad/octo processor systems. ZZZZ = "higher is better". Y = generation.

Not sure when “a few years ago” was, but in 2013 (“4th gen”) Intel had more far than just “M” as a suffix for their consumer CPUs. They had at least EC, EQ, HQ, K, M, MQ, R, S, T, TE, U, and Y. Various generations between now and then have a variety of different suffixes, but never just “M” so far as I know.

It used to be M -> 45W, U -> 15W, Y <15W for mobile CPUs, but Y CPUs were awful and only on the most budget devices. At some point M also sprouted H and HQ, of which M and HQ eventually got dropped.

K was for overclocked/unlocked CPUs, T was for TDP limited CPUs. For "average consumers", both were pretty irrelevant.

Never seen EC, EQ, MQ, R, S or TE cpus,

Still, 4th-9th gen were pretty simple, you needed to know K (unlocked) and F (no integrated graphics) for desktop CPUs if you were buying the CPU directly, if it just came in your PC an OEM built it didn't make a difference.

Laptops you also needed two: M (later H) for faster, less battery life, U for slower, more battery life. If you were going for a netbook, maybe Y also, but there certainly wasn't any price range to contain both Y and M/H CPUs.

Another commenter upward [1] linked an archive of an older nomenclature (though not from the same time I was checking—I was just looking at Intel Ark) which details the more exotic suffixes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26024579

This is pretty similar to AMD though?

   Intel Core  i7     10  65  G7
   AMD Ryzen   9       5  900 X

Reply on news.ycombinator.com