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OE
March 21, 2004, 09:44 AM
Intel finally realized the necessity to offer a new rating system for its CPUs, because the core clock frequency doesn’t give a clear idea of the processor performance any more. Intel now offers a few different desktop and notebook processor families: Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Pentium 4, Pentium M and Celeron. And if you can tell the CPU performance from its working core frequency within a single family, then comparing processors from different families makes absolutely no sense. It is really hard to explain to the average user why a notebook based on Pentium M 1.6GHz is more preferable than a notebook based on Mobile Pentium 4 2.4GHz. Then there is the "Big Mixup" in the same family at times. For example, there are a few Pentium 4 2.4GHz in the market which differ from one another by the bus frequency and L2 cache size, which surely affects their performance. So, introducing a unified rating is quite a logical move in this case.

Intel’s rating system is going to be very similar to BMW classification, because there will be three series:

High End - 7XX;
Middle End - 5XX;
Low End - 3XX.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~pcmc/4.jpg
Taken from a Japanese site

The rating system from Intel will be introduced in May, when Intel announced new mobile Dothan CPUs with 2MB L2 cache and 90nm manufacturing technology.


Regards,

OE