Intel CPU Letters Explained
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
1,084 words · ~5 min read
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so we've done a number of videos here on Techquickie explaining the alphabet
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soup that you have to slurp down in order to understand exactly what it is
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you're buying when you go shopping for electronics and perhaps no company has
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been more guilty of throwing seemingly random letters at product names than
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Intel so while it might not be too hard to understand the difference between a
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core i3 and a core i5 you know bigger
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number is better as a general rule if
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you've ever looked at a product page or a spec sheet for a laptop or even some
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desktops you've probably noticed that sometimes there are letters attached to
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the end of the CPU model numbers too what are those for
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well as it turns out these letters aren't just random characters that Intel
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threw in they actually have real meanings that tell you something about
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the processor unfortunately there are so many of them
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that it can feel like you're trying to crack the da vinci code just to figure
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out what your CPU was designed to do but fear not Techquickie is here to
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demystify what they all mean starting with the one you're probably most
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familiar with already k
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k means that a chip's multiplier is
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unlocked meaning that it can be easily overclocked if you have a similarly
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enabled motherboard non-k chips have very limited
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overclocking functionality so make sure you look for that k if you want to tweak
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your system by the way Intel doesn't talk about it
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as much but the k in hk cpus that you
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occasionally see in high-end laptops also means the same thing
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speaking of which let's move on to h then which officially stands for high
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performance graphics and is used to designate Intel's higher end offerings
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in the mobile segment that consume more power and here's another mobile specific
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one many of those higher power chips also
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have a q on the end this is for quad
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core so that's why you'll often see hq
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on more expensive laptops it is not a
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subliminal message intended to make you think that Intel notebooks are high
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quality or is it
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anyway the other letters that you're likely to see on mobile chips are you
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and why with you standing for ultra low
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power and y meaning
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yeah um extremely low power
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why not e for extremely oh that's right
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because e was used to designate chips that support ecc memory so
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for better or for worse you and y chips
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are what you'll see in laptops and other mobile devices where the focus is more
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on saving battery life than on performance with some y series cpus
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having tdps of under 5 watts
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now it bears noting that Intel has an m
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suffix to make it clear that a chip is mobile but currently it's only being
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used on xeon chips for mobile workstations
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now let's kick things back over to desktop land we'll start with the letter
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t this feels like an episode of sesame street these processors still fit in a
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standard lga desktop socket but they are
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low power so you'll often see them in small form factor or all-in-one
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computers that are designed with smaller power supplies or less aggressive
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cooling other letters can indicate some interesting graphics options so if you
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see a chip with a p on the end this indicates a desktop processor without
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integrated graphics which can save you a few bucks if you're planning to use a
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discrete video card anyway while the newer g cpus feature Radeon rx vega
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graphics that are built in from none other than Intel's biggest rival AMD
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sorry excuse me i mean their total non-competitor Radeon technologies
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group which is a totally different company now of course we'd be remiss if
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we didn't give a quick shout out to r and c which we last saw on the now
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several generations old broadwell line to designate a soldered on CPU and then
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an unlocked desktop CPU respectively
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i don't know what the point of c instead of k was but you know what it doesn't
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matter it's over now let's finish this up then with the most
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dramatic letter of all x
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this indicates a very high end unlocked
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consumer CPU with the most cores and the
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highest prices and it's currently sitting atop the pile in the core i9
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7980xc for extreme
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edition not to be confused with e for ecc memory
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like i mentioned earlier so in summary then
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maybe Intel could do a better job of making these things simpler and more
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consistent for consumers but at least to their credit someone
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over there recognized the problem and spearheaded the creation of this lengthy
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website to help people decipher their ever shifting meanings we're going to
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have that linked below so you can find the latest updates
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speaking of the latest updates if you're not all about getting the latest phone
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we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys like dislike
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