How long till mainstream 6 cores?

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Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Ive decided im not upgrading CPU till 6 cores go mainstream. Since my recent GPU upgrade seems to be doing well even with my aging CPU i feel no reason to upgrade yet.

My question is how long till this is a reality, it seems intel has been trying very hard to keep 6 cores away from mainstream especially with newer generations, it seems 6 cores were more obtainable when i bought my 930 than they are today with prices through the roof on the HEDT platform.

Basically when is 6 core hitting the standard desktop intel platform?

If its soon ill probably wait it out, if not so soon i may invest in another 6GB of RAM.

Thanks guys.
 
Arachnotronic

Arachnotronic

Lifer
Mar 10, 2006
11,715
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late 2017/early 2018, with Coffee Lake.

Anyway, I don't know why you don't just get a 6800K and X99 board if six cores is a big priority for you It's not that much pricier than a 6700K + good Z170 board.
 
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Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
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Arachnotronic said:
late 2017/early 2018, with Coffee Lake.

Anyway, I don't know why you don't just get a 6800K and X99 board if six cores is a big priority for you It's not that much pricier than a 6700K + good Z170 board.
Click to expand...

The original plan was get a 6 core for my current platform but my CPU has been so solid at 4.2Ghz for so long i have not felt the need to upgrade. I was going to prioritize the rest of my system if the GPU was not being fully utilized but it seems the old girl still has enough grunt for a rx 480.

If as you say its only 1-2 years away thats not a big deal ill wait out this coffee lake you speak of, and do a full system upgrade then including a beefier GPU for VR.
 
D

daxzy

Senior member
Dec 22, 2013
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Assuming you mean when will 6C hit consumer LGA platforms? You probably want to visit this thread here. It looks like 2018 timeframe (although you should probably take that with a grain of salt).

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...in-h2-2017-icelake-in-2018-digitimes.2485480/

The i7-930 had a MSRP of $305 at launch (Q1 2010). The cheapest 6C/12T chip in Q1'2010 you could buy was the i7-980X@ $1059 at launch. It was not until Q3'2010 where you could buy the i7-970 6C/12T at $594. Right now, you can get a Haswell based 6C/12T i7-5820K for $389. Or bump it up to Broadwell 6C/12T i7-6800K for $434. Seems much cheaper than what was available in 2010.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what you're getting at about wanting 6 cores. The i7-6700K is literally double (probably more) the processing power at stock vs stock speeds against a i7-930 while probably using half the platform power.

If you want a cheap 6 core upgrade, you can get the many decommissioned Westmere 6C/12T Xeon's for your system. Heck, if you want a relatively cheap 16C/32T upgrade, you can get the multitudes of decommissioned SandyBridge server CPU's + motherboard. There are also plenty of Haswell 6C/12T Xeon E5 v3's on eBay for ~$150 (only downside is their low clock speeds).
 
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ClockHound

ClockHound

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Nov 27, 2007
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In the meantime...could slip a sub $80 6 core Xeon in that X58 and enjoy more cores, better overclocking, lower temps and better love life while you're waiting.
 
MajinCry

MajinCry

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2015
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I'm in a similar boat. I want me more cores AND more single thread performance, at not-insane prices. Closest I could find were those 8 core sandybridge xeons on ebay, but you can't overclock those. Hopefully Zen will bring somethin' worth nabbing.
 
MongGrel

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
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Last edited:
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whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
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Arachnotronic said:
late 2017/early 2018, with Coffee Lake.

Anyway, I don't know why you don't just get a 6800K and X99 board if six cores is a big priority for you It's not that much pricier than a 6700K + good Z170 board.
Click to expand...
This would be a good solution if the OP is actually doing something that requires or can use more then 4C/8T. Otherwise he is better off getting a 6700K and overclocking it.
 
R

Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
751
126
whm1974 said:
This would be a good solution if the OP is actually doing something that requires or can use more then 4C/8T. Otherwise he is better off getting a 6700K and overclocking it.
Click to expand...

I do alot of video encoding, for now i just batch run them in the evening while i sleep but would be nice to have more horsepower. There is no such thing as to much CPU power when it comes to video work.
 
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Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
751
126
yeah im looking into the 6 core xeons now that i know i can OC them.

Just for future reference can you still OC the new xeons or did intel at some point put a end to it?
 
superstition

superstition

Platinum Member
Feb 2, 2008
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Rifter said:
Basically when is 6 core hitting the standard desktop intel platform?
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Not sure about that. The vague answer is that it will happen when Intel stops finding quads profitable enough to keep as the standard for enthusiast gamers. It's a bit of a chicken-egg deal. Games want to be featured in charts showing multicore gains but don't want to provide such subpar performance on quads that it will alienate a large user base. I would expect the transition to be slow, especially since quads with 8 threads are pretty capable when it comes to meeting the needs of gaming.

Mainstream 6 cores will likely happen in Q1 with Zen. The big question is whether or not they can be overclocked to a level that enthusiast gamers will find satisfactory or not.
 
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Fanatical Meat

Fanatical Meat

Lifer
Feb 4, 2009
35,862
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superstition said:
Not sure about that. The vague answer is that it will happen when Intel stops finding quads profitable enough to keep as the standard for enthusiast gamers. It's a bit of a chicken-egg deal. Games want to be featured in charts showing multicore gains but don't want to provide such subpar performance on quads that it will alienate a large user base. I would expect the transition to be slow, especially since quads with 8 threads are pretty capable when it comes to meeting the needs of gaming.

Mainstream 6 cores will likely happen in Q1 with Zen. The big question is whether or not they can be overclocked to a level that enthusiast gamers will find satisfactory or not.
Click to expand...

This I'm thinking and hoping Zen comes out late this year with 8 core / 16 thread CPUs that actually work close to or better than intels current line up. Then we'll see moar cores from intel.
I know the odds of this is slim its much more likely AMD will screw something up with availability or reliability or just be mediocre performers with extra cores.
 
superstition

superstition

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Feb 2, 2008
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AMD is unlikely to have "screwed up" with Zen. However, it also has limitations of its choice and that it had no choice about.

One of the limitations is that AMD apparently went for a small chip size, to keep yields up and price down. That decision came with, apparently, a decision to limit FPU performance and AVX-2 in particular. Another limitation is the 14nm low power process node which, particularly in conjunction with the decision to use a high-density rather than high-performance design library (not confirmed, I guess) results in it being harder to clock high. How much AMD can extract from that process initially with Zen CPUs remains a heated question here.

I wouldn't expect Zen to be available much this year, rather sometime in January.

A big chip with EDRAM on IBM's high-power SOI node would have been particularly exciting but probably not as profitable for AMD.
 
Fanatical Meat

Fanatical Meat

Lifer
Feb 4, 2009
35,862
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superstition said:
AMD is unlikely to have "screwed up" with Zen. However, it also has limitations of its choice and that it had no choice about.

One of the limitations is that AMD apparently went for a small chip size, to keep yields up and price down. That decision came with, apparently, a decision to limit FPU performance and AVX-2 in particular. Another limitation is the 14nm low power process node which, particularly in conjunction with the decision to use a high-density rather than high-performance design library (not confirmed, I guess) results in it being harder to clock high. How much AMD can extract from that process initially with Zen CPUs remains a heated question here.

I wouldn't expect Zen to be available much this year, rather sometime in January.

A big chip with EDRAM on IBM's high-power SOI node would have been particularly exciting but probably not as profitable for AMD.
Click to expand...

That's sort of what I meant like Zen CPUs are clocked embarrassingly low or they offer 80% of the performance per core or their motherboard partners put out cheap crappy boards that fail or they produce so few of them its impossible to find without an enormous markup.
I've said it many times I want a strong AMD alternative again but I've learned that no matter how difficult something is to fail at AMD will find a way.
 
R

Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
751
126
does amd have a chance at a comeback? i wrote their CPU's off 6 years ago and haven't even thought about them once since. I honestly thought their CPU business was dead.
 
Fanatical Meat

Fanatical Meat

Lifer
Feb 4, 2009
35,862
17,402
136
Rifter said:
does amd have a chance at a comeback? i wrote their CPU's off 6 years ago and haven't even thought about them once since. I honestly thought their CPU business was dead.
Click to expand...
Tentatively Zen is looking promising. Should be out by end of the year but inventory will be limited.
 
el etro

el etro

Golden Member
Jul 21, 2013
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whm1974 said:
Yeah but if 6 and 8 cores become more common, developers will have more motivation to write more consumer level software
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hardness of to extract paralelism not only varies for different kinds of loads, but for all for all loads dificulty to extract paralelism rises progressively or most times exponentially. Most apps that average PC user runs can't even extract well all four cores power.
 
S

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
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Considering how many computers are sold with Pentiums, Celeron's and i3's, I'd suggest that 4 cores is barely mainstream now.
 
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