Intel to Announce New Processors
On January 7th Intel will announce their new
"Core" i3, i5 and i7 series processors. While they are reserving the details of the new chips model numbers and speed, they have confirmed the release of these new chips.
This is significant because the i3 is an entirely new chip, and until now the i5 has only had one chip available.
According to Intel, the Core 2 Duo (C2D) and Core 2 Quad (C2Q) series will fade away, while Pentium, Celeron and Atom processor will remain.
When you look at brand name computers the array of processor names can make you dizzy. Buying the right product for your needs can be a real challange. For those confused shoppers, I offer this quick breakdown of the different series processors.
Pentium is the old stand by name, but the new chips have very little to do with the familiar Pentium 4 we all think of. The current Pentium chips are for "basic computing" according to Intel, while the Celeron remains as a value chip (read 'slow'), and the Atom is the low voltage, low heat, low power chip used in netbooks and very low end computers.
The Pentium and Celeron chips are indeed dual core these days; however they use the older cores that underperform the current processors. Confusing the situation even more, Intel has intermingled Pentium chip model names with C2D model names. For example Intel currently shows a E6300 as a Pentium, while it shows the E6320 as a C2D. You can look up the status of each model number here. Even the lowly Atom is offered in Dual Core these days, and actually provides performance that is satisfactory for many applications.
For the purpose of shopping remember that a Pentium, Celeron or Atom chip will provide only basic computing performance. The term "Dual Core", does not indicate a faster series anymore. These chips should not be selected unless your needs are indeed limited to internet email, surfing and basic homework type projects.
Next I will try to lay down a roadmap of the new "Core Series" processors and how they relate to your computing needs.
These new processors included the i3, i5, and i7 series processors, which are built on two different platforms. The typical user could care less about platforms, but there is a significant difference in performance between the two platforms. The i7 processor is built for both platforms, which again makes the processor market harder to understand. You can read a lot more detail on the two new platforms here.
The short answer is the i3, i5 processors use the slower platform, while the i7 900 series processors (and up) will use the faster platform. The i7 800 series (and below) will use the same platform as the i3 and i5.
Take these remarks with a grain of salt, because the so called slower platform I mentioned is lightyears faster than any of the current platforms
used by Pentium, C2D or C2Q.
So using the bigger is better theory you can now select your computer by model number, if you want a rocket ship, choose any "Core series" processor which has a model name starting with an "i". From there, the i5 is faster than the i3, the i7 is faster than the i5, and a i7-900 series is way faster than an i7-800 series.
Clear as mud?
~Steve