Intel and AMD have been long-time rivals and are not the only ones out there. Like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Burger King, Ford and GM, Sony and Nintendo, these rivals occasionally mock, taunt, or even attack each other in their marketing campaigns. Intel and AMD looked like they’d abandoned this strategy for a while, but Intel seems to have broken the cease-fire with a presentation it posted on intel.com, accusing AMD of acting like a snake oil salesman. A term used to describe someone who deceives, frauds, and even scams the consumers.
Posted with the title “Core Truths – How the ‘Latest Technology’ is not always what it seems,” the presentation even goes as far as slipping a deceitful-looking used car salesman, who are also identified with deceptive sales techniques, with the words “Trust me, it’s new”on it.
The 27-slide presentation is now deleted, but it’s still indexed in search engine result pages. Multiple sources are aware that it existed and some even have managed to record the whole presentation.
Intel mentions the new AMD 7000 series CPU in the presentation as the reason for its assertion. The 7000 series CPUs are supposed to feature the Zen 4 architecture, but AMD offers some CPUs with the older Zen 2 architecture included in the same umbrella name.
Some interesting slides from Intel’s Core Truth presentation:
It’s worth mentioning that Intel’s presentation ignores its own history of confusing processor naming and architectural shifts. In 2021, Intel introduced the Core i9 11900K, reducing core count from its predecessor, the 10900K, causing confusion in its lineup. This move followed years of Intel employing intricate naming schemes like 14nm, 14nm+, and 14nm++, essentially serving as a rebranding tactic for the ongoing use of the 14nm processors. In 2021, Intel abandoned process node naming and preferred the name “Intel 7” to describe its third-generation 10nm chips in a period in which it was competing against AMD products based on TSMC’s 7nm node.
Intel’s recent critique coincides with the launch of its 14th gen desktop processors, criticized for feeling like overclocked 13th generation counterparts with minimal architecture changes. The Core i7 saw a core boost, but reviewers questioned Intel’s naming strategy, highlighting the lack of substantial innovation between the generations.
Intel argues that using the number 7 doesn’t imply novelty, contrasting it with Core i5 CPUs labeled with numbers like 1335U, indicating 13th-generation technology. However, Intel’s assertion seems inconsistent, especially when compared to its criticism of “Ryzen 5” as misleading while defending the clarity of Core i5, which has been applied to various CPUs over the past decade. There are also rumors that Intel’s Raptor Lake refresh mobile chips might follow the trend of rebadging, similar to its desktop CPUs, potentially being relabeled 13th generation CPUs despite having “14” in their name. Intel’s presentation also doesn’t mention prices despite comparing the performances of the said processors in detail.
It’s hard to argue that any of the big tech companies are pure as the driven snow when it comes to marketing tactics and preferences, but it doesn’t look like AMD is trying very hard to sweep anything under the carpet. Selling older architecture CPUs under the same series name as the latest ones may look a bit fishy, but it has a graph showing what every element in the model name stands for. The interesting detail in all this may be the post being removed after a short while. Did Intel executives or marketing team regret posting it? Was it the act of a rogue employee? We may never know, but at this point the question of whether AMD will retaliate weighs heavier.
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