Intel's Core Truths playbook is a very strange marketing campaign that attempts to make AMD
look bad by accusing them of all the things that Intel's already doing. It's bizarre,
and is probably why they took it down again almost instantly. But VideoCards managed to
make copies of them, which I'll link to in this video's description for you to see for
yourselves. GamersNexus has already covered this topic, but I don't think even his video
fully explains quite how many own goals Intel has scored with these slides. It's honestly incredible
how bad it manages to make them look. Core Truth Number 1 mentions their competitors Ryzen 5 7520U
is built on dated Zen 2 architecture, released in 2019, which they repeat in capital letters on the
following page. This is factually correct- AMD's new 7000 line-up of mobile processors does contain
some products with architectures from up to 4 years ago, and it isn't something that anyone's
happy with. But it's brave of Intel to call them out for doing this, when they did exactly this for
5 years. Their Skylake architecture first came out in 2015 with their 6000 series, and lasted through
till the 10,000 series. Granted, in this time clock speeds got higher, core counts got greater,
minor tweaks were made under the hood, but deep down it was still based on the same 40 nanometre
Skylake as Intel had been using for years already. But all of Intel's rebranding is in the past. It
must be, because otherwise calling out their competitor for doing it would be doubly stupid,
wouldn't it. Oh wait, Intel's still doing it. Their latest 14,000 series of processors is
mostly just a rebrand of the 13,000 series from last year, which itself is just the 12,000 series
with minor tweaks and more e-cores. So Intel's still doing what they're accusing AMD of doing,
only unlike AMD, Intel has no newer architecture to use instead. Until next week. So why is new
technology rebranded? In Intel's case, they like to release a line-up of processors with a new name
every year, but are unable to make something new each year. Hence the refreshing of older products,
which has allowed Intel to release 13 different series of core processors in the last 13 years.
This is probably done because it looks good for there to be a new product name to distinguish
a laptop available today from one being sold a year ago, even if, under the hood,
they're essentially the same thing. So I think that AMD's new and misleading naming system is
then wanting to do the same thing. They even say it themselves. The 7000 series is for 2023,
the 8000 series is for 2024 and so on. That excuse doesn't stop their naming scheme from being
grossly misleading though, with no fewer than 3 different architectures making their way into
the 7000 series. I suspect this was done because old technology is cheaper, and thus fulfils the
low-end, and reserves their latest and greatest products for the more premium price points. AMD
wants to have their cake and eat it, and it's good they've been called out on that. But Intel are the
wrong ones to do that because they've been doing the same thing. Which gets us onto Core Truth 2,
which is a very similar point, with Intel accusing AMD of reusing older architectures. Only this Core
Truth is focused around how they hide it in plain sight, and all it consists of is one of AMD's
slides. And I don't really get the point in them saying this because at least it's showing that AMD
has the decency to show it in the name somewhere. Which is another spectacular Intel-owned goal,
because Intel doesn't bother showing rebrands in their naming scheme. The Intel 13400,
13500 and even the 13600 come to mind. They sound like they're from the 13000 series. Yet unlike
the 13600K and those above it, they don't have the same increased cache amounts that actually helped
the 13000 series to be marginally better than the 12000 series was. And unlike AMD's naming scheme,
there's no way of you knowing that these Intel processors are cut down in this way, besides there
being a lower number in the name. Even people who follow the processor scene might just imagine this
means they don't overclock as far or whatever. But no, they are being cut down in other,
more meaningful ways. Which you'd at least have been warned about if Intel bothered to use some
of those zeros in their products names to actually mean something. It's not specifically mentioned in
these slides, but I think this campaign is only talking about mobile processors. But that's still
a very flimsy defence. Core truth number 3 is… just weird. The sort of weird where it might not
be wrong, but it's still a weird point to try and get across. And it's weird that nobody involved
with making these slides ever stopped to think how weird it would sound. For this point, they choose
to focus on education and to say how learning depends on having the latest technology. Or
something. Now you might think this is a desperate think of the children kind of plea as though AMD
reusing old architectures is harming the kids of today. And it turns out it is exactly that. Look,
in the next slide here's a child and I guess it's showing that she could be getting better education
if she was using Intel instead of a rebranded AMD processor. Especially if she's using the lens
effect in Photoshop or converting MP3 to MIDI, like all the cool kids are doing these days.
So this slide is probably all factually correct, but it doesn't stop it from simply being weird,
and oddly specific. And the next slide gets even more interesting. Someone somewhere is proud of
themselves for cramming so much information into a single diagram. But they never stop
to ask if they should. Let's start with the simple. If it was just this, then they could
at least have aligned everything properly. As it is, it looks horrible. And no way can this be a
finalised slide that Intel would approve to show to the world. Now we'll extend it out to here,
which I guess attempts to show the tasks that each tier of processor opens up. It doesn't
quite work like that, but okay. A few of these are ranked questionably, but none as much as
eSports being reserved for the core i9 processor at the top, when eSports games would benefit LESS
from i9 levels of multitasking than most of the others on this list. And last we'll open up the
rest of the slide, which attempts to group these tiers of processors by age. And try as I might,
I can't actually see anything glaringly wrong with what's being implied here. But it doesn't stop it
from being weird to associate processor tiers with ages, instead of with requirements. Intel's new
Meteor Lake processors are set to be released next week so you'd THINK these slides would be here
to promote that, yet the campaign seems far more focused on attacking AMD instead. It's a baffling
and childish marketing attempt from a company worth billions and I'm not sure who it's trying
to impress. Though it certainly has gained a lot of publicity! The final core truth is that not all
cores give you the best overall performance, which I honestly took as Intel directly criticising
their own E cores for being slower than their P cores. But it's not trying to say that,
it's trying to hammer home that different tiers of AMD processor use different architectures and
are beaten by competing Intel processors. And indeed, not all cores are equal, cos it shows
Intel's 8 core N305 outperforming AMD's 4 core processor by just 9%. That would have been a
lot more impressive had you not spent this entire presentation ragging on how bad Zen 2 is. Also the
fact that this was all done in Crossmark, which I have to admit I had never heard of before this
presentation. As per Intel's appendices, this is a benchmark from the BAPCO consortium which, and
this is how thoroughly I research stuff, Wikipedia notes as having bias in its benchmarking products.
And back in 2002 Intel was the sole contributor to a series of CPU tests which heavily favoured
their CPUs. Oh dear. But that was 20 years ago. Intel was fine for doing that and I'm SURE
they wouldn't still be doing the same underhand methods to gain an advantage now. Surely. But it
still makes Crossmark a rather tainted benchmark for them to use to slag off their competition.
Out of curiosity, I tried finding the benchmark results they had used on Bapco's site. Which was
a challenge, cos the site is dogshit, regularly freezing, going blank and requiring reloading,
and the filters are deeply flawed. No wonder nobody uses Crossmark. Eventually though,
I weeded out these results on the dates and the computer specs highlighted in the appendix. It
seems they actually DID test the two processors themselves, on the same day, back in May,
on very similar systems. And they were very fair about the results they ended up using. The AMD
processor had 6 documented results, the Intel, 7. Half of AMD's results were significantly lower
while Intel's weren't, which I wonder if it could have been them testing without multithreading on
or something like that, which would impact the AMD product more than the 10 core Intel one. It's
all very interesting trying to establish what exactly they decided to test here. But, to core
truth's defence, none of this matters because it seems they erred on the side of caution and
on the slides put these two processors as equals, despite the Intel product generally outperforming
the AMD one on Crossmark's site. So this is the one positive thing I can say about the slides-
they don't appear to have been intentionally naughty with the benchmarking results. Intel's
Core Truths campaign raises more questions than answers. What was Intel trying to achieve with
this? Who was going to be convinced by these Core core truths that they've made? Who signed this off
as being a good idea? How did they manage to make themselves look so bad, so many times? And who
actually made these slides? The wording is sloppy and amateurish. It's full of rambling sentences,
caps locked words, exclamation marks and quotation marks around everything. This sort of stuff is
really damaging to their reputation. It just boggles my mind. This presentation REPRESENTS
INTEL. And I'm embarrassed for them. If what their competition's doing is so terrible, then you think
it would just make it easier for Intel to make their own products look good. But by focusing on
AMD like this, it stinks of desperation. It gives everyone the impression that Intel has to resort
to dirty tactics because they can't win by normal means. You probably know of UserBenchmark already.
If not, it looks like a hardware benchmarking site but it absolutely hates AMD, and it rags on
them in every product summary. And not just the ones about AMD! Even on other bits of hardware,
it will hastily get the summary of the product out of the way and then use the rest of the available
space to rant about AMD again. Particularly in recent years, the site has become a ridiculous
meme and a place not to be trusted, for obvious reasons. No one knows who runs the site,
which opens the door to all sorts of fun but WILD conspiracy-driven speculation, like the idea that
the site might be funded by Intel because it's so anti-AMD. To which I look at and think,
nah, that can't be the case. It would just be too blatant if Intel was in some way involved with the
insane ramblings that are on UserBenchmark's site. A billion-dollar corporation should be beyond such
petty and childish tactics. So when they release something as petty and as childish as their Core
Truths campaign, they don't help themselves and only fuel such crazy speculation. Even I had deja
vu when looking through these slides, spotting things written in a way I would have expected to
have seen on a user benchmark summary page. Sure enough, in the Ryzen 7600 summary, user benchmark
says, BUYING NEW AMD PRODUCTS IS LIKE BUYING USED CARS. IT TAKES TIME, EXPERIENCE AND A TASTE FOR
SALES HYPE. And then in these slides, Intel likens AMD to a used car salesman. What is going on here
Intel? Why are you imitating user benchmark? At least they don't get their benchmarks from user
benchmark. That site believes a 16 core Ryzen is only 2% faster than an 8 core version. No,
Intel is using Crossmark, which thinks it's 5% slower. Let's end with something constructive.
How could Intel have improved this Core Truths marketing material? Simple. By not releasing it.