The April Fools joke this year isn’t Userbenchmark because that still hasn’t
stopped being a joke since last year. No- this year, I’m going to go and criticize ALL
companies for having really STUPID naming schemes! For common plebs, product naming schemes are worse
than useless. They’re actively misleading, to suggest that something starting with a bigger
number is better than one starting with a smaller one. And trying to explain to an
average person how it IS but also ISN’T is just too complicated and time consuming.ALL naming
schemes are bad for one reason or another. We just accept it because you can’t condense something as
complex as a computer component down into a single number. Unless you’re userbenchmark.
Chances are, you are not a common pleb. You’ve watched every Linus video this week
and have the outline of Steve’s hair burned into your retinas- you’re a tech GENIUS!
So what’s the 3rd number of a product’s name mean? Because now, in Intel and Nvidia products,
the 3rd number is the new 2nd number. Intel got there logically by constantly
adding 1 to their first number. Nvidia kind of reached 10 (with a few missed generations) and
then started counting in 10’s for some reason… apart from for the 1600 series,
with 6 obviously chosen as being the sensible half-way point between 10 and 20. Oh wait.
AMD currently uses the 3rd number of their graphics card names to represent mid-generation
refreshes. But they also use it in their processor lineup because they ran out of numbers after 9,
so kind of used the third number as overspill. But Intel started it. Or
did they? Depends on how far you go back. The simple answer is: IT’S COMPLICATED.
And then the last number is completely useless. It’s just there to make the others numbers 10
times more valuable. Apart from the Intel 5775C, a processor that proves even billion-dollar
corporations enjoy palindromes. I’m sure there are exceptions to every rule I’ve listed here and that
is exactly why I’ve chosen this topic for April Fools. Because when it comes to naming hardware:
why should rules be followed. It’s not like the names of things should be there to help
inform people about what it is that they’re buying or anything like that.
I’ve not even got onto the letters that they put at the end of their names. You could have
a whole video talking about that. A whole SERIES, even. Nvidia uses TI to represent a higher tier of
performance than the one without TI, but recently has started releasing those WITHOUT there being
a base model to compare it against. And they did that SUPER naming scheme for one generation which
was essentially a TI but not, because why not. A long time ago, AMD used XT to represent the
best. So Nvidia got XT and used it to represent their budget options, which is kind of funny.
Then AMD got all defensive, which apparently involves adding lots of X’s to things, like the
XTX and X XTX and, of course, the XFX RX XTX. But it’s fine! Because as long as else is equal,
a larger first number means a better product. Apart from with the 6500 XT, which doesn’t
have some of the stuff that the 5500 XT has. Intel’s 1200 processors are mobile versions
of the 12000 series. But there are mobile 12000 series processors as well! And AMD’s 4000 series
of processor is actually more cut down than their 3000 series was. Their new 7000 series of
processor is pretty good. Shame they forgot about the 6000 series. Although they do have a few 6000
series mobile chips! Which are Zen 3+, while their 5600U is Zen 3… but their 5500U is only Zen 2.
But all that’s fine! I mean it isn’t. It’s terrible. But it STILL isn’t as bad as their
latest naming scheme which has managed to make everything EVEN WORSE. For their
mobile processor lineup, they’ve kept the same 7000 series name as with their desktop
series. But now that 7 no longer represents the generation of processor that it’s built
upon- it instead represents the year 2023. …It’s like they’ve purposely gone out of their
way to make it NOT make sense. ‘7’ represents 23. This means that 24 will be 8, and 5 will be
9. And then, because they started with a number as big as 7, they’ll be out of higher numbers so
they’ll have to revise the whole thing again come 2026, or carry on with the same ridiculous naming
scheme until we get processors starting in 23 to represent the year 39. And… urgh. Which will it
be? It’s kind of exciting isn’t it. I love to put things far into the future on my calendar. Just
to give me something to look forward to- in 2025 we in England are guaranteed the shitshow that
is a new election, and in 2027 we’ve entered the Deus Ex timeline, but I had a gap there
in 2026 for a while so thanks for that AMD. I think I could have been just about okay
with 2023 being 7. Really! I could have begrudgingly accepted that… if it wasn’t
for how the 3rd number now opens up new and EVEN SNEAKIER ways to mislead the customer than ever
before. Because the 3rd number is now what the 1st number used to be. So in a way, the 3rd number is
the most important of the lot now, because if you’re not careful then you could theoretically
buy a totally modern-looking processor that’s still based on technology from 2017.
They haven’t done that. Yet. But it’s already got pretty bad.
So like I said, Ryzen 7000 on the desktop represents the cutting edge Zen 4. Yet their
Ryzen 7000 mobile lineup already consists of a mixture of Zen 4, Zen 3 and Zen 2 processors.
ZEN 2!!! I don’t envy whoever maintains this list on Wikipedia. But looking through it,
I’d currently say that the 7520U is the worst offender. To make any sense of this name you
have to read it backwards, because judging it by any conventional naming standards puts it as being
a modern mid-range processor. But it isn’t: it’s actually based on the 3000 series! And unless you
already know that, then the ‘5’ in the name is all but irrelevant. Thanks to the new naming system,
all we can know for sure is that it was made in the year 2023! …only it wasn’t,
because it was released in 2022. And check out how they painstakingly
list every market segment here between 1 and 9. Then what do they do? They immediately refer to
this as a 0 segment, which I spent too long assuming it was an ultra low-speed model,
until I realized they were using 0 to refer to all 9 of these at once. I think. I double checked this
when proof-reading this video and I’ve left it more confused than when I started. It seems like
the more you know about other processors, the less you’ll know by default about this lineup!
I won’t dwell. I’ll let you think up the ridiculous possibilities of the
Ryzen 9915e and stuff like that. I want to end this video on something positive!
I’m old. I’ve seen naming schemes come and go, come and go. They go up the generations,
sometimes skipping one for a reason that’s never explained,
then once they reach 9 they have a crisis and reinvent themselves again as something else.
Yet Intel seem better than most. Their Core processors have gone through 13 generations
now! And pricing that seems locked to inflation. And sure, several of these generations were very
similar. They missed a trick by not having the I number as being the number of threads,
and there was a bit of a core-count regression come the 11000 series. But for the most part,
they’ve maintained one of the longest-running CONSISTENT naming schemes ever seen! Thanks Intel.
And they’ve just entered the graphics card market with their A series. It’s not a number,
it’s a LETTER. And next will be the B series, and then the C series and so on. Which means we could,
potentially, see 26 generations of graphics cards, all with consistent
naming schemes! We probably won’t, but it’s a much better starting point than AMD’s new
naming scheme with its 3 year shelf life. The comments section of this video is going
to be terrible, I know that already. It’s going to be full of things that I’ve apparently forgotten,
because it’s not like I had enough to already fill this video with. But by all means,
tell me what I’ve missed because it’s always nice to have more content that
I can use for next year’s April Fools. But I have a challenge for you: imagine you’re
about to make your OWN processors and graphics cards. What naming schemes would YOU choose?