Are you waiting for Kaby Lake?

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Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
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Wife wants a desktop computer. Perfect time to build out something around the 7700k in January\Febuary for myself. And give her this 4690k I am using right now. Hope Microcenter has their usual pricing schemes for the 7700k.
 

Dave2150

Senior member
Jan 20, 2015
639
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Right, meaning it has 4 more PCIe lanes total, which im pretty sure is what i and he said.

Those extra chipset lanes all have to go through DMI 3.0, which is a x4 PCI-E v3 link (3.93 GB/s) on both Skylake and Kabylake (Z170+z270). This means the extra 4 lanes are pretty much meaningless from a throughput perspective.
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
16,681
4,627
75
Yes, I am. I have an i3, and I want at least four real cores at some point. But I'm not sure if I should wait for Coffee Lake with 6 cores.
 

Justinbaileyman

Golden Member
Aug 17, 2013
1,980
249
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Those extra chipset lanes all have to go through DMI 3.0, which is a x4 PCI-E v3 link (3.93 GB/s) on both Skylake and Kabylake (Z170+z270). This means the extra 4 lanes are pretty much meaningless from a throughput perspective.

If that were true Intel wouldn't be adding those extra lanes to the Z270 motherboards now would they??
 
Mar 10, 2006
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If that were true Intel wouldn't be adding those extra lanes to the Z270 motherboards now would they??

Justinbaileyman, here is a good explanation for what Dave2150 is talking about:

Now, you don't get 20 lanes of PCIe, six SATA ports, M.2 connectors, all of the USB, and GbE at the same time. Z170 is highly configurable, so motherboard manufacturers have to pick and choose how they utilize its "ports". Six of 26 are used up by USB 3.0 (which is where "up to 20 PCIe lanes" comes from). With the remainder, your vendor of choice can tap into another four USB 3.0 ports, SATA, and PCIe-based storage. But they all eat into Z170's connectivity. Populating all six SATA 6Gb/s ports, for example, eats into six lanes. A PCIe storage device monopolizes four. On the Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard we’re using to test, MSI exploits the flexible PCH with four PCIe x1 slots and one PCIe x4 slot, an ASMedia ASM1142 USB 3.1 controller that consumes two lanes and two M.2 slots that appear to share a four-lane link. MSI juggles the various upgrade paths with PCIe switches.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-2.html
 

unseenmorbidity

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2016
1,395
967
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Yes, I am. I have an i3, and I want at least four real cores at some point. But I'm not sure if I should wait for Coffee Lake with 6 cores.

Coffeelake might not even exist, and even if it does, it's a long ways off. If you are planning on buying a new board too, then you should really consider Zen.
 
Mar 10, 2006
11,715
2,012
126
Coffeelake might not even exist, and even if it does, it's a long ways off. If you are planning on buying a new board too, then you should really consider Zen.

Coffee Lake definitely exists, it was confirmed by Intel's Murthy Renduchintala in a leaked memo. There have been several credible leaks discussing the key technical aspects of it.
 

simas

Senior member
Oct 16, 2005
412
107
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Are you waiting for Kaby Lake - may be, depending on what the value offering of Zen would be.
Also, (was) very interested in Skylake-X but I think it is priced out of my adoption. Intel premium in CPU and also in MB is just too high to justify every gen or even every other generation adoption.

I am sitting on 6 year old SB system and was interested in eventually updating it to get later PCIE standard support, USB3+ , faster storage. Just need to see the value in doing it, especially moving beyond the 4C/8T combination which we seem to have forever