What’s the difference between seven and eight graphics cores? The websites of major computer manufacturers make buying tech decisions harder, not easier.
The websites of major computer manufacturers are making buying decisions harder, not easier
I’m routinely stunned by the lengths computer manufacturers go to keep us here at PC Pro in (just about) gainful employment. We really shouldn’t be necessary.
Fair enough, 30 years ago, when PCs were largely identical beige boxes that many people were buying for the first time, you needed friendly, expert advice on what to look for. Now most people are in double figures of computers owned and yet you’re still coming to us for advice on which one to buy next, albeit in smaller numbers than back in the 1990s.
Part of the reason for this is that the manufacturers make it so hard for people to choose. Deliberately hard. Even Apple – the company with the simplest, most streamlined selection of computer models in the entire industry – makes it awkward for the customer to make a buying decision.
Let’s take the new(ish) M1-based MacBook Air. Apple presents the customer with two choices: the base £999 model has an eight-core CPU, seven-core GPU and 256GB of storage, while the £1,249 model has an extra core on the GPU and 512GB of storage.
The storage decision is simple: Apple always puts a sub-par amount of storage in its base models to tempt you towards the pricier model. But what the heck’s going on with the graphics cores? Assuming you’re not too bothered about the storage, how is a regular consumer meant to make a sensible buying decision between seven and eight graphics cores?
Apple’s no help when it comes to making a decision. Its website prattles on about how the eight-core GPU
“plays hard, works wonders”, and shows pretty graphs about how it performs in handpicked benchmarks, but makes no mention of the seven-core variant. Seven cores are clearly not going to be as fast as eight, but will it make even a smattering of difference in the real world? Why is Apple forcing folk to choose?
Of course, if you’ve read PC Pro regularly, you’ll know that the sevencore variant is basically the eight-core chip with one dysfunctional core, a process known as “binning”, where rejects are effectively rebranded as lesser models. You can understand why image-conscious Apple isn’t too keen to explain this to its customers. But you should also understand it’s going to make minimal difference to graphics performance: the seven-core chip was around seven-eighths as fast the eight-core one in our tests, which will be barely noticeable when translated into frame rates in games.
Apple is far from alone in forcing customers to make buying decisions they’re ill-equipped to understand. Let’s look at Lenovo. Head to the “laptops” section of its website, narrow your search down to “traditional laptops” (rather than “2-in-1s”, “thin & light” or “gaming”…) using the big buttons at the top of the screen and you’ll be presented with… 28 different models. Twenty-eight.
It soon becomes clear that Lenovo counts anything that can be folded into a clamshell configuration as a traditional laptop – including all the 2-in-1s. But let’s pick on something the average consumer, say my dad, might choose: the ThinkPad E14, which starts at £569. Hit the “Learn More” button and the first thing we learn is there are three different specs. The two most expensive models have a beefier processor, not that dad would know the difference between a Core i3 and a Core i5, and Lenovo’s not about to explain either. Under “storage” in the feature table, two of them have the word “kein” – German for “none” – which is slightly disconcerting, although it does have “secondary storage” SSDs listed. Under “wireless”, all three have Intel Wi-Fi 6 cards, but only the mid-priced one has Bluetooth 5.1.
What has the average buyer learned from clicking on that car crash of a page? They’ve learned to pick up the phone to their tech journalist son and ask him which sodding laptop to buy.
I refuse to believe that anyone in charge of Apple’s or Lenovo’s (or any other computer seller’s) website is looking at those pages and thinking “we’ve done the best we possibly can to explain this stuff to the customer”. They’re working on the £8 bottle of wine principle: bamboozle customers with so much choice that they end up buying one at a certain price just because it feels right.
It’s shoddy salesmanship, it’s endemic across the industry, and the only good thing about it is that it keeps us in a job, helping to explain which computers are worth the money and which aren’t. Whether you think that’s a “good thing” will, I grant you, largely depend on whether you’re a tech journalist or not.
How is a regular consumer meant to make a sensible buying decision between seven and eight graphics cores?
I refuse to believe that anyone in charge of Apple’s or Lenovo’s site is thinking ‘we’ve done the best we possibly can to explain this stuff ’