Have you tried and tried and tried and just can’t understand Intel’s naming schema? Well, today, I’m here to demystify the mystery. Yes, you can call me Sensei😊. To be fair, naming schemes are a hassle throughout the industry but we’ll be focusing on demystifying Intel’s CPU names today. For the sake of keeping this short (and my sanity), I’ll be focusing on their most popular, the ‘Core’ line of Intel processors. Do not fret though as I will tell you where their other products stand... In another post(It’s already a herculean task). Before we delve further, allow me to explain the ‘Core’ name. In the good ol’ days, every CPU had just one core, this means the CPU could only handle one task at the same time (Multitasking? Sorry, we don’t do that here). So, one day Intel were playing around with things better left alone and they birthed the Two-core CPU, (It’s like having to go through pregnancy once and having two kids – Twins), and they let everyone know about it, they named the CPU – The ‘Intel Core 2 Duo’ (talk about redundancy), and the 'Core' line was birthed. Nowadays, CPUs can have anywhere between 2 to 128 cores (even more).

The 'Core' line has four entries in it's lineup -

1. The Core i3 - Intel's Cheapest and least powerful Core CPU.
2. The Core i5 - Midrange and midrange performance likewise
3. The Core i7 - Top end performance for top dollar
4. The Core i9 - Enthusiast level performance and a price to match

Let’s take the intel i7-12900K for reference purposes, everything that applies here also applies to all other intel ‘core’ chips (i3, i5, i7, i9).

The CPUs Series is usually at the beginning of any name, in this case that becomes the Intel i7, and we already know the i7 is the high end offering from Intel… Easy enough eh? Next is the chunk of numbers behind, that would be 12900K in our case. Now here’s a rule of thumb – the higher the total number, the newer and more powerful the CPU is. Now the 12 in our example means that it’s the 12th generation and as the time of writing the most powerful/newest of the Intel Core i7 lineup, which means that a CPU numbered 11900K is the previous generation and therefore older/less powerful. For CPUs with only four digits, ‘8200k’ for example, the ‘8’ would be the generation, while the rest of the numbers and the letter will follow the same rule as stated below.

The next bit is the ‘900’ which is known as ‘Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) and is usually the last three digits of the product number. When the SKU is higher, compared with another CPU of the same Generation and Series, it means that the CPU with the higher SKU will have more features and higher clock speeds. For example, the 12900 will have more high-end features than a CPU numbered 12800 or so. (Tired yet?).

The final piece of this puzzle is the lettering behind all the numbers. I’ll give you a little list for most of the lettering, but if you’re not building your own custom PC by yourself, then you shouldn’t worry too much about this as Laptop and PC manufacturers will use what they believe to be the best for their product.

a. ‘K’ on the end would means that the CPU is overclockable (enthusiasts can play)

b. ‘G’ indicates a built-in graphics processor (onboard GPU)

c. ‘U’ stands for Ultra low power

d. ‘Y’ stands for Extremely Low power

e. 'H' stands for high performance

There’s a few more letters but these are the most common, and you should be alright at this point, you already learnt so much. For the insatiable ones like me, you can go over to a new tab of your browser and geek out on ‘Intel Product Line Suffix’.

Did you really think it’d be a short post, come on, is Intel a joke to you? LOL😊

Au Revoir et A bientot. Thanks for reading.