Not so long ago we talked about Intel’s plans concerning the introduction of the processor rating. Intel has finally realized the necessity to offer a new metrics for its CPUs marking, because the core clock frequency doesn’t give a clear idea of the processor performance any more. In fact, this tendency has existed for quite a while now. Today Intel offers a few different desktop and notebook processor families: Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Pentium 4, Pentium M and Celeron. And if you can tell the CPU performance from its working core frequency within a single family, then comparing processors from different families makes absolutely no sense. Intel’s marketing team, however, faces the following problems more and more often: it is really hard to explain to an unsophisticated user why a notebook based on Pentium M 1.6GHz is more preferable than a notebook based on Mobile Pentium 4 2.4GHz. Moreover, there are “tricky things” even within a single family sometimes. For example, there are a few Pentium 4 2.4GHz modifications in the today’s market, which differ from one another by the bus frequency and L2 cache size, which surely affects their performance. So, introducing a unified rating is quite a logical move in this case.

We have also mentioned in our news the major principles that the new Intel rating would be based on. Intel’s rating system is going to be very similar to Opteron marking system. Or even to BMW classification, because there will be three series:

• High End - 7XX;
• Middle End - 5XX;
• Low End - 3XX.

For more details, please take a look at the table composed by the Japanese PCWatch site:

The rating system implies that you should be able to move easily from the youngest to the top model within a processor family with a certain discrete step. For instance, Dothan and Prescott processors will differ from the next models by an increment divisible by 10. Celeron processors will be rated with a smaller increment divisible by 5, because the difference in their performance and clock frequency is smaller.

The size of this increment will be determined by the cache size as well as the processor bus frequency. For instance, if Dothan 1.6GHz with 400MHz bus is rated as 725 then a similar model with 533MHz bus will be rated as 730 even if its working frequency is the same.

They haven’t yet thought of a rating system for Pentium 4 XE processors, but they will surely belong to the most expensive and powerful “7xx” series.

By the way, the use of this rating system is a part of Intel’s preparations for the launch of the new Merom processors and its desktop analogue, which is now known as Conroe. Intel starts moving away from the tradition to increase the clock frequency starting with Tejas announcement. The cache of the new CPUs is known to be increased to 2MB, and the bus frequency will rise to 1066MHz. Of course, they will have to add a few extra rating options in order to distinguish these CPUs from other Prescott based ones. In this case you will definitely get a better impression of Tejas’ performance even if it works at the same frequency as Prescott.

The rating system from Intel will be introduced in May, when Intel announced new mobile Dothan CPUs with 2MB L2 cache and 90nm manufacturing technology.