Intel to Rebrand Pentium "Kaby Lake" Processors as Pentium Gold

[btarunr]

Intel this Tuesday, issued a curious-looking product-change notification (PCN) directed at retail-channel distributors, which points to the re-branding of 7th generation Pentium "Kaby Lake" desktop processors under the new Pentium Gold brand (PCN #115827-00). The re-brand affects retail SKUs of the Pentium G4560, G4620, and G4600. Intel is borrowing the precious-metal nomenclature from its Xeon product-line over to the Pentium brand, which will help consumers tell the MSDT (mainstream-desktop) Pentium processors from the ULP (ultra low-power) chips branded Pentium.

When this product-change comes into effect from the 2nd of November, 2017, MSDT Pentium dual-core chips will be branded Pentium Gold, while low-power "Gemini Lake" SoCs will bear the Pentium Silver brand, besides Celeron. Re-branded names apart, the Pentium Gold SKUs will be identical to the parts they are replacing. The Pentium G4560, for example, will be re-branded Pentium Gold G4560 (or simply "4560") and will carry an identical feature-set. You probably won't even need to update your motherboard BIOS (of your 100-series and 200-series chipset motherboards) to use these chips. It's not likely that these chips will work on 300-series chipset motherboards since they feature a different pin-map, and the retail box design will reflect that with clear markings. The name change also comes with a refreshed case-badge and a slightly modified box design.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Ferrum Master]

Pentium OLD

 

[StrayKAT]

Their whole product line has been confusing me as of late.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Their whole product line has been confusing me as of late.

This cannot be more confusing than their Xeon line, or worst, their mobile line...

 

[eidairaman1]

Nothing Gold about them.

Easier to have Pentium and Celeron

Or Pentium Low Power , Pentium High Power

 

[StrayKAT]

This cannot be more confusing than their Xeon line, or worst, their mobile line...

To be honest, I never paid attention. Xeon is out of my league. There's just so many variations of Core now though. And two "prosumer/gaming" oriented chipsets, that enable similarly named CPUs, but with different sockets.

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

At this point Intel could license Ryzen and call it Copy Lake. I couldn't care less about the nomenclature, however to someone not familiar with this things (vast majority of people), I reckon that it can get quite confusing...

 

[dozenfury]

At this point Intel could license Ryzen and call it Copy Lake. I couldn't care less about the nomenclature, however to someone not familiar with this things (vast majority of people), I reckon that it can get quite confusing...

Agreed there. I feel bad for less technical folks trying to buy a PC. Whoever is doing their naming/marketing is almost trying to intentionally confuse customers.

 

[ShurikN]

Does that mean there will be no desktop Coffee Lake Pentiums?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

 

[Jetster]

I don't know why but now I want one

 

[RejZoR]

I don't quite understand the position of Pentiums anymore. For example, on laptops, you have shit tons of Celeron N3000 series and then there's shit tons of Core i3 5005 and 6006. Where do Pentiums fit in? I'd understand it's between Celeron and Core i3. But there just aren't any around. Maybe I've seen like 2 or 3 so far. But they cost almost more than Core i3 laptops so I'm confused...

 

[CheapMeat]

Awful.

Their Xeon line is headache inducing now and they're doing the same to the rest.

 

[dj-electric]

The term "Pentium Gold" is somehow extremely ironic

 

[GoldenX]

I don't quite understand the position of Pentiums anymore. For example, on laptops, you have shit tons of Celeron N3000 series and then there's shit tons of Core i3 5005 and 6006. Where do Pentiums fit in? I'd understand it's between Celeron and Core i3. But there just aren't any around. Maybe I've seen like 2 or 3 so far. But they cost almost more than Core i3 laptops so I'm confused...

Both N3000 Celerons and Pentiums are Atoms with a not shameful name, so in fact there are no i3 based Pentiums and Celerons on mobile.
The name seems stupid, if they would call a N3050 an Atom, they would not have this problem.
By the way, does that make any future desktop Celeron a Celeron Gold or is the Celeron finally dead?

 

[RejZoR]

What? I don't really understand what you're saying.

 

[peche]

really hate when big brands decide to change sub series name to confuse everyone around...

 

[ZoneDymo]

See.... AMD renaming certain cpu's as Athlon would make sense as that has a good name.
Pentium.... is just dated... its not really a positive name if you know what I mean.

 

[phanbuey]

See.... AMD renaming certain cpu's as Athlon would make sense as that has a good name.
Pentium.... is just dated... its not really a positive name if you know what I mean.

I liked the pentium brands... they used to at least have generational numbers - Core ix is missed out on that whole boat and an i7 means nothing if you dont know what year it came from.

I cant tell you the number of times my friends went "oh that's not a good price/computer? but it's an i7...?"

 

[Keullo-e]

I don't quite understand the position of Pentiums anymore. For example, on laptops, you have shit tons of Celeron N3000 series and then there's shit tons of Core i3 5005 and 6006. Where do Pentiums fit in? I'd understand it's between Celeron and Core i3. But there just aren't any around. Maybe I've seen like 2 or 3 so far. But they cost almost more than Core i3 laptops so I'm confused...

Well, G4560 for example was an awesome budget processor. Since they're almost the same as i3's but with half of the price, I truly understand why they still exist.

But this Gold rebranding is just so damn stupid.

 

[StrayKAT]

See.... AMD renaming certain cpu's as Athlon would make sense as that has a good name.
Pentium.... is just dated... its not really a positive name if you know what I mean.

I always liked it.

Better than Celeron for sure. lol. I imagine they were going for "accelerate", but it just sounds like "celery".

 

[newtekie1]

 

[Frick]

Well, G4560 for example was an awesome budget processor. Since they're almost the same as i3's but with half of the price, I truly understand why they still exist.

But this Gold rebranding is just so damn stupid.

They should just give all (desktop) Pentiums HT and be be done with it.

 

[Hood]

See.... AMD renaming certain cpu's as Athlon would make sense as that has a good name.
Pentium.... is just dated... its not really a positive name if you know what I mean.

Now, the Pentium brand is associated with budget CPUs. In it's heyday (2005) the Pentium 4 HT series were the fastest Intel CPUs available, and the first consumer chips with Hyper-Threading. They were very expensive, and ran very hot, requiring a cooler with a 5000 rpm fan that sounded like a jet taking off. So yes, the brand name is dated now, but was once proudly hailed as Intel's flagship chip.

 

[ensabrenoir]

....in other news Intel releases their 12,11and 10th generation processors in that order this week because.... rIght now no matter what they do....it dosesn't matter...