It seems like all big companies are prone to shooting themselves in the foot.

Most recently, it’s been Intel.

They seem to be phasing out the E5XXX series Pentium CPUs (very easily overclocked to over 3 Ghz, even if you don’t know much about overclocking) and replacing them with the E6300 Pentium

Now this is where the fun starts: do a google search for E6300, and what you will find, is mostly websites that talk about a Core2 Duo 1.86Ghz CPU…

Hmmm, now thats a bit slow, and most of this information seem to be dated around 2007… It just doesn’t sound right.

I then realise what Intel have done: within the space of 3 years, they have released 2 CPUs with exactly the same identifier: E6300.

The difference is that the newer E6300 runs at 2.8Ghz, is regarded as a “Pentium”, and is a lot faster than the older E6300

Take a look at the following intel specs for the two CPUs:

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27248&processor=E6300&spec-codes=SL9TA

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=41493&processor=E6300&spec-codes=SLGU9

You’d think that with 4 digits available for describing CPUs (ie thousands of numbers), that the chances of Intel accidentally “re-using” a number is unlikely.

It looks like no matter how powerful the processors get, some marketing departments just can’t count. 🙂