(Special Report) - Gone are the days when processor names were something as simple as their clock speeds. If you wanted a nice and powerful 3GHz processor, you simply asked for a P4 3.0GHz and that was it. Ever since Intel has decided to revamp its naming conventions, the confusion makes you wonder if the whole idea of renaming was a smart move.

We can’t change Intel’s nomenclature (although we do hope they make it better soon), but we can analyze and make them simpler for you to understand, so you don’t get confused the next time you are out buying an Intel processor.

To make things simple, if you want to learn Intel’s processor families, think of BMW. Just like BMW has a series 3, 5, 6, and 7, each being substantially better, and hence more expensive than the one before, Intel has the 3xx series for the Celerons (not covered here), the 5xx series for the low-end desktop systems, the 6xx series for the midrange/high-end desktops, the 7xx series for notebooks, the 8xx series for serious desktop performance and the 9xx series, which is yet to debut.

Note that BMW discontinued Series 8 in 1999, which was designed for the luxury sports coupe market. Plus, it never had a Series 9 product lineup.

Note: We received few e-mails from concerned readers who raised questions in regards to our usage of core and code names when labeling different tables. Please understand that core and code names can be used interchangeably to represent data used in the tables.

Moving on with Intel and it’s desktop endeavors, the problem is that if the names were as simple as stated above, we would’ve somehow managed to figure them all out. But someone at Intel obviously wanted to ensure that we don’t remember processor names without having a 100-page manual on product families, so there are modifications to each series, which may or may not be consistent across different series.

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