I think we were expecting Skylake with more cores, that's what it is but not really, the changes to cache and the mesh arrangement seem to have a negative impact on significant cases, maybe gaming is another victim of it, but it seems Intel implies is more related to power management!?
another thing with Skylake that we would expect was good power usage, well, it's not here... combined with the TIM thing, it feels like the high clocks are a late reaction to competition!? or is it just inevitable because of the changes (cache, mesh...)?
still performance is there it's very strong most of the time, and if you are willing to invest on a really good cooler and delid (RIP warranty) it can OC quite far.. but it makes you wonder about the 18 core chip, is that thing going to be like the Xeons, 2.4GHz base clock or something?
also the high risk of killing the CPU when switching from Skylake to Kabylake is...
but 10 core drop in price from the 6950X looks good, even the 7800x looks like a good competitor to the Ryzen R7 (even 1700 OC), the problem is that when you factor the cost of motherboards, high end cooling, possible delid and so on not really, but if you are going for high end MB+cooler anyway the 7800x OC is probably the better choice
still, this is probably the worst Intel "HEDT" launch ever.