I have built more computers of AMD than Intel recently so I'm off the track following Intel CPU naming scheme. AMD stay easy with naming. For example, for FX series, they increase 'a' in FX-abbb to represent number of cores. So higher number means it performs better.
Intel used to have this scheme, but now to me it looks like all confusing. They have 'gen' for each product group i3,i5,i7, then even in the single product group, for example, core i5.
Just looking at the name of CPU, I can't find what is gen and if it's faster than another.
For example,
Intel Core i7-4960X and Intel Core i7-3517UE.
Two processors have same 4 digits and trailing one or two letters. Just reading the name, I get impression that both are probably performing similar, but when I look at this bench mark
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html, the latter performs only 20% of what the prior does. Wait a minute, there's 'Intel Core i7 980' in the middle of the two processors in the bench mark chart and it performs twice faster than Core i7-3517UE. 3 digit named i7 performs twice better than 4 digit, so it leads me to think, the digit is meaningless.
Is there any secret of Intel naming scheme to computer performance between CPU just reading the CPU name like AMD or am I doomed to live with this bench mark if someone just says 'hey, I have Intel core i7, the fastest intel cpu'??