Oh please, AMD CPUs had lower clocks so to compete with Intel's (making up numbers to illustrate the point) 2.3Ghz where theirs was 2.1Ghz, they would call it Athlon 2300 or something to the effect. They may have had a point that their 2.1Ghz was as good as Intel's 2.3Ghz chip, but it's not been straightforward, probably, since a 286. (Edit, I meant to reply to the parent comment)

See Mac vs PC ads. Still memorable and impactful.

To be honest without looking it up, all I remember is stoner Steve. Dude, you’re getting a dell vs the Jeff goldblum mac ad that showcased pc cabling vs simple Mac. Still smile when I think of stoner Steve.

I agree. I think a deeper problem is it takes a Ph.D in Intel / AMD branding to understand what to buy. An 80486 was faster than an 80386, and 33MHz was slower than 66MHz. It was simple.

Intel's i7 line-up goes from 2 to 16 cores, 1-4GHz, spanning 13 generations. Toss in i3/i5/i7/i9, and lines like Atom and Xeon.

Each time I need to upgrade my computer, I groan. It's not just less fun, it's positively miserable.

Most people I know either buy the cheapest possible computer, or an Apple. I don't know why Intel thinks anyone will spend extra if they have no idea what they're buying. Most non-Apple users I know have phones with faster processor, higher-resolution displays, and for higher prices than their laptops.

Agree on the misery. I was speccing out a build and inadvertently picked a 2019 processor because it was extremely unclear.

(I'm now actually looking at an AMD 7700 rig, because intel won't do ECC on "desktop" CPUs, except for a rare chipset that I can't find a mobo for sale at the moment...)

AMD + ECC is nice. That's how I'm set up. Also, RAID. I've been very happy with general system stability.

It's the Packard-Bell marketing strategy. Confuse the marketplace with a profusion of similar models so that comparison shopping can't be easily applied by casual buyers.

That strategy works well in a lot of places, but it's not what's going on here. This is just plain old incompetence and mismanagement. It's a mess, rather than a strategy.

For Intel, it just results in most buyers buying the cheapest possible system since there is no way to tell what's what. Intel would make a lot more selling $400 CPUs than $50 CPUs, but to do that, people would need to see the value.

The 13 generations is particularly bad, if you're just trying to comment to someone looking for a used system, when half the time they just list "Core i7" which is meaningless without at least a model generation.

> Do you remember the last Apple ad?

Yes, and dear God am I sick of it. AFAICT, they've bought all advertising space on the web, mobile, and TV for me, at the moment. (It's the one of the iPhone auto-dialing 911 in a wreck.)

I'm (still) not buying an iPhone.

The last Apple ad I remember was that song 1234 by Feist.

Which was… 2007.