(Guru3D) kaby Lake i7 is another boring quad

[beginner99]

KL barely qualifies as having any IGP improvement at all.

Depends what you use it for. Better HEVC support and HDPC 2.2 is something that can be pretty useful since nowadays you will keep the cpu 5 years or even more. But yeah, you can argue you will get those feature with a dGPU anyway, at least if you use one. For the average media consumer, using a laptop it's a change that can have an effect in couple of years (whether to upgrade or not).

 

[Arachnotronic]

KL was never going to be gen10, it's just a repeat of Devil's Canyon. The more pertinent question is if we'll see a true(r) gen10 with Cannonlake or another repeat of Broadwell i.e. gen8.5 D:

Intel refers to it as Gen 10 internally, Icelake GPU is referred to as Gen 11.

 

[myocardia]

I though KL was supposed to be all about igpu improvements. Not so much architecture per se but codecs for 4k playback or whatever.

That's exactly what Kaby Lake will be. It may very well have a 100-200 Mhz bump for the lower cost/lower performance CPUs, but it's all about the 10-bit hardware decode of both H.265 & VP9, along with full hardware encode for H.265. It isn't known yet if the hardware encoding will be 8-bit or 10-bit. Kaby Lake is also supposed to have native USB 3.1 support, as well as native HDCP 2.2 support.

 

[Arachnotronic]

That's exactly what Kaby Lake will be. It may very well have a 100-200 Mhz bump for the lower cost/lower performance CPUs, but it's all about the 10-bit hardware decode of both H.265 & VP9, along with full hardware encode for H.265. It isn't known yet if the hardware encoding will be 8-bit or 10-bit. Kaby Lake is also supposed to have native USB 3.1 support, as well as native HDCP 2.2 support.

Gen9 media has full HW encode support for HEVC 8-bit, AFAIK.

 

[LTC8K6]

Gen9 media has full HW encode support for HEVC 8-bit, AFAIK.

Wiki list of features:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Quick_Sync_development

and KL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake#Architecture

 

[FlanK3r]

not boring CPU from my side...Still the 4c/8t is enough for 99% of users

 

[LTC8K6]

Wonder if KL will actually allow us to have Optane/3D Xpoint?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint

 

[Zodiark1593]

Depends what you use it for. Better HEVC support and HDPC 2.2 is something that can be pretty useful since nowadays you will keep the cpu 5 years or even more. But yeah, you can argue you will get those feature with a dGPU anyway, at least if you use one. For the average media consumer, using a laptop it's a change that can have an effect in couple of years (whether to upgrade or not).

Well, until the end of this month, there are only two GPUs with said HEVC support, both quite pricey.

 

[Eddward]

Wonder if KL will actually allow us to have Optane/3D Xpoint?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint

looks like yes

btw, this is not just clock bump like "Haswell refresh"...

 

[DrMrLordX]

I remain skeptical of the "increased core performance" part but we'll see. bclk OC improvements might also be interesting. Maybe the iGPU won't drop out after bclk OC this time around?

 

[beginner99]

Wonder if KL will actually allow us to have Optane/3D Xpoint?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint

It does and IMHO it's the main reason to wait for kaby lake instead of buying skylake now. You get support for it. No need to buy such a product immediately but once they become more affordable in couple 2-3 years still on the same CPU it would be a nice upgrade.

 

[BigDaveX]

I remain skeptical of the "increased core performance" part but we'll see.

Intel are probably waiting until they've got more info on how Zen performs before they play their hand. If Zen turns out to be any sort of threat, I can see Intel pushing up the clockspeeds or including eDRAM in some SKUs.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Intel are probably waiting until they've got more info on how Zen performs before they play their hand. If Zen turns out to be any sort of threat, I can see Intel pushing up the clockspeeds or including eDRAM in some SKUs.

If Zen is very competitive, they won't be able to respond immediately. They might be able to do "emergency" measures like pulling out extra 100-200MHz clocks, but other than that, the design is complete.

If it makes AMD competitive in just few more areas, Intel can just target those segments.

As long as Intel remains a performance leader, everything above top AMD SKU means they can charge as high as they'd like, within reasonable means.

I remain skeptical of the "increased core performance" part but we'll see. bclk OC improvements might also be interesting. Maybe the iGPU won't drop out after bclk OC this time around?

This is just IMO, but I believe it. They must have known about 14nm problems for some time, because you can't do more than clocks if it was recent as when they announced 14nm issues. It won't be more than 3-5%.

Will it make a difference? Not really. What would you think of a 7700K part with 3% higher per clock performance + 100MHz clocks?

It does and IMHO it's the main reason to wait for kaby lake instead of buying skylake now. You get support for it. No need to buy such a product immediately but once they become more affordable in couple 2-3 years still on the same CPU it would be a nice upgrade.

Fairly certain it'll be a yawner. Why? Because it'll only be interesting when it has a proprietary, or a brand new Optane-optimized connection. AFAIK, the only Optane part for PC users happen to be Optane on NVMe. The only DIMM connection Optane seems to be for Purley-EX MP support chips that need massive amounts of memory and is already using a buffer to do so. Maybe they mean software support using RST? That's quite "meh". What do you think a 500x faster tech limited to a 6x faster interface would mean? It would mean just 6x faster. It needs a 500x fast interface for a 500x fast tech.

 

[beginner99]

Fairly certain it'll be a yawner. Why? Because it'll only be interesting when it has a proprietary, or a brand new Optane-optimized connection. AFAIK, the only Optane part for PC users happen to be Optane on NVMe. The only DIMM connection Optane seems to be for Purley-EX MP support chips that need massive amounts of memory and is already using a buffer to do so. Maybe they mean software support using RST? That's quite "meh". What do you think a 500x faster tech limited to a 6x faster interface would mean? It would mean just 6x faster. It needs a 500x fast interface for a 500x fast tech.

Possibly. But if consumers only get PCIe product, no need to add the bullet point about intel Optane products. PCIe ssd is pcie-ssd. There is nothing special the platform must support to make it run. Certainly possible it's just a marketing thing. But could also mean the new IMC in Kaby lake supports 3D Xpoint DIMMs.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Intel are probably waiting until they've got more info on how Zen performs before they play their hand. If Zen turns out to be any sort of threat, I can see Intel pushing up the clockspeeds or including eDRAM in some SKUs.

I think there's a significant eDRAM part for LGA1151 coming later this year along with the Kabylake launch, though it might only be Skylake cores . . . or something? I've lost track of all that to be honest.

If Zen is very competitive, they won't be able to respond immediately. They might be able to do "emergency" measures like pulling out extra 100-200MHz clocks, but other than that, the design is complete.

Yeah that's my general thought. They probably won't do anything crazy like AMD did with K8 in response to Core2 like the QuadFather platform (ugh).

This is just IMO, but I believe it. They must have known about 14nm problems for some time, because you can't do more than clocks if it was recent as when they announced 14nm issues. It won't be more than 3-5%.

The reason I'm not even that bullish on Kabylake is that it was announced as a stop-gap in response to problems with the 10nm ramp. Sure there's some "disabled stuff" in Skylake that will allegedly be enabled due to bugfixes or . . . whatever. Will that amount to any kind of performance increase? Maybe in a small selection of applications? To me it seems like a copy-paste of Skylake with extra codec support. But I'm not sure. It really isn't worth losing sleep over it.

Will it make a difference? Not really. What would you think of a 7700K part with 3% higher per clock performance + 100MHz clocks?

Mostly "meh". 3% might not even be measurable in some circumstances.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yea, it is an interesting question how much info Intel has about the performance and pricing of Zen. The fact that they are bringing 10 cores to BW-E makes me think that zen will be fairly competitive. OTOH, the fact that they did not lower prices on the 8 core makes me suspect Zen will either be expensive or compete with hex core BW-E. Of course, Intel could just be maximizing profit as much as possible and can cut prices when Zen comes out if they need to.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Depends what you use it for. Better HEVC support and HDPC 2.2 is something that can be pretty useful since nowadays you will keep the cpu 5 years or even more. But yeah, you can argue you will get those feature with a dGPU anyway, at least if you use one. For the average media consumer, using a laptop it's a change that can have an effect in couple of years (whether to upgrade or not).

I agree on the decoding part. And for the 99% users that's a key feature. But besides that there wont be much, if anything to look for on the IGP front

 

[CakeMonster]

Will there be a KL desktop release? Crickets so far on this supposedly 2016 architecture.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Will there be a KL desktop release? Crickets so far on this supposedly 2016 architecture.

Yes, Kabylake is coming to mainstream DT in 2016.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yea, it is an interesting question how much info Intel has about the performance and pricing of Zen. The fact that they are bringing 10 cores to BW-E makes me think that zen will be fairly competitive. OTOH, the fact that they did not lower prices on the 8 core makes me suspect Zen will either be expensive or compete with hex core BW-E. Of course, Intel could just be maximizing profit as much as possible and can cut prices when Zen comes out if they need to.

I don't think the 10 core implies Intel thinks Zen will be competitive or not. They figure they can make some more money by offering a $1500+ SKU, and they're recycling a die they already built for server customers, so why not?

 

[myocardia]

The reason I'm not even that bullish on Kabylake is that it was announced as a stop-gap in response to problems with the 10nm ramp. Sure there's some "disabled stuff" in Skylake that will allegedly be enabled due to bugfixes or . . . whatever. Will that amount to any kind of performance increase? Maybe in a small selection of applications? To me it seems like a copy-paste of Skylake with extra codec support.

Really? To me it seems like it's a full-featured early release of Cannonlake, including all of the features I was expecting Cannonlake to have...well, besides having a 10nm architecture and possibly having a 6 core in the most expensive mainstream SKU.

I'm also expecting pretty much every kid on the planet who PC games on iGPU to be begging their parents for one of these. It will not only have a faster iGPU, it will also have higher quality video encoding. I have no idea why every kid these days wants to simulcast his gaming, but they do, and Kabylake should allow for better looking hardware encoding & streaming (ie, Twitch and the like), assuming it has 10-bit H.265 encoding, which I think is likely.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see the cheaper 2x0 chipsets to allow using 2400, 2666, 2800, or even possibly 3000 Mhz DDR4, to help out the considerably faster iGPU. This seems to me, at least from what we know at this point, to be a much bigger deal than Skylake, since it also will include native USB 3.1, Optane/3dXpoint support, in addition to all of the iGPU improvements, which will be by far the most we've seen in a single generation of iGPU improvements.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Really? To me it seems like it's a full-featured early release of Cannonlake, including all of the features I was expecting Cannonlake to have...well, besides having a 10nm architecture and possibly having a 6 core in the most expensive mainstream SKU.

I was at least expecting Cannonlake to be another 5% IPC bump. Of course I was also expecting that it might be a further retreat from high-powered desktop systems so I must say that it really isn't on my radar as an anticipated product.

Also, again, how many of the Kabylake products going to have the "big" GT4e? I haven't checked the roadmaps recently but I thought we'd see Skylake GT4e for desktops in Q4 2016, which is not a Kabylake. Getting all the new decoders will require stepping down to a smaller iGPU, will it not?

 

[CHADBOGA]

It will be interesting to see if Kabylake gets more out of DDR4 and if we will be able to establish that is why it offers improved CPU performance, as opposed to other reasons for IPC improvements.

 

[myocardia]

Also, again, how many of the Kabylake products going to have the "big" GT4e?

I wish I knew, but I don't. I was actually surprised that Intel never released any Skylake SKUs with eDRAM. I've started to wonder if they have canceled eDRAM completely, at least for the 14nm process, besides their attempt with Broadwell.

Getting all the new decoders will require stepping down to a smaller iGPU, will it not?

I don't see why it would. It would add transistors, though, so it's possible. I just can't imagine Intel releasing a new iGPu, even calling it Gen 10 in-house, and it not having higher performance than the generation before.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I wish I knew, but I don't. I was actually surprised that Intel never released any Skylake SKUs with eDRAM. I've started to wonder if they have canceled eDRAM completely, at least for the 14nm process, besides their attempt with Broadwell.



I don't see why it would. It would add transistors, though, so it's possible. I just can't imagine Intel releasing a new iGPu, even calling it Gen 10 in-house, and it not having higher performance than the generation before.

There are skylake cpus with edram, I know they are top of the line in surface pro. Dont know where else they are, but it is unfortunate that edram is restricted to mainly 1500.00 plus devices.