Intel's Kaby Lake Branding Confounds, But The Real Devil Is In The TDP Details

[srmojuze]

I am in my 40's, I used to know a TON about PC's. I was (and still, often am) the guy that my friends and relatives came to for computer help. My first PC was an XT and then 286, 386, 486 etc... Back then it was processor number and clock speed.

Now, I don't have the faintest clue what I am buying. I try to get i7 and a great graphics card, but I've been fooled sometimes. Thinking I was buying something pretty great and finding out it was only a bit above average.

Guess what that does? It makes me wait longer to purchase. I do NOT spend more time researching. I spend less time researching and I try to make my computers last longer. Screw someone over and they don't trust you anymore and they don't like doing business with you anymore. AMD is no better. I haven't had ANY idea what their processors mean for ages and have avoided them like plague.

When I was younger, I often built my own PC's and would use AMD to get more bang for my buck. But at some point AMD quit being easy to decipher and I quit using them. Now Intel is no better, but since they are the leader and "gold standard" I still buy PC's with Intel chips. I don't build my own anymore because it is much more complex with the way that software and hardware interact and I generally prefer to just buy a PC pre-built.

My long-winded post is to say this: Crap like this makes people (like me) not buy PC's as often as we used to buy them. There is no longer an obvious migration to bigger and better. Intel has NO FRICKING CLUE about branding and selling. They SHOULD BE marketing (like automobiles) an easy-to-recognize, well branded top-of-the line processor that everyone wants, but then they can sell the next notch or two down to the average joe who wants to be associated with the premier processor they hear about. Instead, they muddy the waters so much that no one has any idea which processor is what or whether one is better than the other and there is NO MARKETING going on at all.

How can such smart people get so much so wrong?

I understand your pain. I was in Apple-land for several years and only got back into the PC world a few years ago (Intel Ivy Bridge and Nvidia Kepler).

Let's just say that there are mainly two types of PC/laptop (let's leave out mobile for a while) users - someone that knows the nuts and bolts and someone that doesn't.

Nowadays you cannot rely on any of the branding or numbers, those are at very best indicators of what you're getting. For PC builds especially, and certainly for laptops too, there's really tons of research one needs to do if you care about the components.

Most people won't.

But for others, I guess that's why we're here on this site.

 

[Wisecracker]

""AMD also allows vendors to adjust the TDP range of the Summit Ridge and Bristol Ridge APUs, though it's unclear if it supports dynamic adjustments. AMD encountered some customer pushback when it originally added the feature because OEMs did not disclose the actual TDP settings. The company reigned in the configurable TDP range with its newest APUs to discourage misleading adjustments. ""

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OEMs caught as much grief as AMD --- Chipzilla should have paid attention to that.