Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

[mscrivo]

Much higher quality components on boards that are designed to meet workstation standards. X99 is on an entirely different level, able to handle much more "abuse" while remaining stable.

What abuse? ... throwing it around the room? Maybe X99 boards we're soldered better or have stability brackets I don't know of that can withstand throwing it around? Seriously though, I don't think X99 platform buys you stability, it buys you higher hardware limits. I have a "mainstream" system and it literally never crashes. As long as you buy a decent motherboard, PS and RAM, you're golden, even with the "mainstream/consumer" platform.

 

[mohit9206]

I don't know, I kind of agree with him. I'm still on a 2600k with a modest overclock of 4.2 and I feel I could use an upgrade. My system feels slow, despite everything else being upgraded. I built a 4790k system for a friend last year and felt quite a difference in just windows performance alone, (photoshop, firefox and chrome mostly, which can be rather heavy with large profiles), and the i6700k is even faster than that paired with good DDR4. So yeah, I agree with Ian, it is time to let go of Sandy Bridge, you will feel the difference and you get lower power consumption (especially at idle) to boot.

Maybe your system feels slow is because your windows installation is old and usually PCs do get a bit slower the older they get. You're friend's new PC felt faster because its a brand new machine just built. That and the upgrade itch makes one feel the need to upgrade.
38% IPC improvement from a four generation old CPU is a let down more so when you consider only 2.7% improvement over Broadwell and 5% over Haswell. Skylake was hyped up to be a decent improvement but it didn't turn out to be that way. Intel over promised and under delivered.
I will wait until Zen, Kaby Lake or maybe even Cannonlake to upgrade my Sandy Bridge system . Intel cannot just expect to get away with only 2% IPC increase over previous gen. 2%? Really?

I disagree. At stock a Core i7 6700K is 38% faster than Core i7 2600K in CPU-bound games according to Hardware.fr, which means that it will lose even when OCed to 5GHz.
Sure, 5GHz Sandy Bridge is still an awesome chip but 4.6-4.8GHz Skylake-S will be noticeably faster when you are CPU limited.

The thing is its impossible to be CPU limited these days in anything. The limitations is almost always GPU bound.

 

[Sweepr]

PC Perspective did a nice clock per clock comparison including Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake (too bad they used DDR4-2133). Comparing the last 'Tocks':

Cinebench 11.5

- Single Thread

Skylake vs Haswell: 11% advantage
Haswell vs Sandy Bridge: 9.1% advantage

- Single Thread

Skylake vs Haswell: 11.2% advantage
Haswell vs Sandy Bridge: 12.5% advantage

TrueCrypt Average

Skylake vs Haswell: 15.6% advantage
Haswell vs Sandy Bridge: 15.8% advantage

x264 First Pass

Skylake vs Haswell: 15.9% advantage
Haswell vs Sandy Bridge: 10.6% advantage

x264 Second Pass

Skylake vs Haswell: 12.2% advantage
Haswell vs Sandy Bridge: 17.7% advantage

www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Review-Skylake-First-Enthusiasts

All around a solid Tock.

Oddly enough, it looks like an L4 equipped Broadwell might be the one to get for gamers coming from older systems, if one can be had.

A Core i5 5675C close to MSRP prices will be a great option for users heavily invested in LGA1150+DDR3. It won't clock as high but it's a hair (1.6%) faster than Skylake-S per clock in games and 14% faster than Haswell.

Skylake-S makes sense if you are coming from Sandy Bridge (maybe Ivy Bridge) or older chips and willing to build a brand new system, preferably with fast DDR4 RAM (+3000MHz).

 

[mscrivo]

Maybe your system feels slow is because your windows installation is old and usually PCs do get a bit slower the older they get. You're friend's new PC felt faster because its a brand new machine just built. That and the upgrade itch makes one feel the need to upgrade.
38% IPC improvement from a four generation old CPU is a let down more so when you consider only 2.7% improvement over Broadwell and 5% over Haswell. Skylake was hyped up to be a decent improvement but it didn't turn out to be that way. Intel over promised and under delivered.
I will wait until Zen, Kaby Lake or maybe even Cannonlake to upgrade my Sandy Bridge system . Intel cannot just expect to get away with only 2% IPC increase over previous gen. 2%? Really?

I know as much as anyone else that Windows installations get slower overtime, given the number of systems I've built and maintain. I should have mentioned that these systems were both formatted and compared around the same time. Still I understand that various things can cause discrepancies, like the fact that his system had a better SSD, but the performance improvements I was seeing went beyond just faster load times for apps. Anyhow, I still think it's a worthy upgrade from SB, but you're right at the end of the day, it's a bit disappointing that this is all they could squeeze out after 3 generations and almost 4 years.

 

[mikk]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-9.html

2xMSAA hardware support since Broadwell, quite a difference in Half-Life 2 to Gen 7_5.

 

[Doomguy]

Looks like Asus made a Z170 board with DDR3 support! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...572&cm_re=asus_skylake-_-13-132-572-_-Product

Maybe I will upgrade from my 2500k afterall.

 

[Keysplayr]

Techspot Review:

Look at the difference between DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3000 performance.
Now imagine if AnandTech had used DDR4-3600 (like Hardware.fr did) instead of DDR4-2133 in their review.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_6700k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,14.html

 

[jagilbertvt]

Amazon.com is now listing i5-6600k, but it's out of stock. Still no sign of i7-6700k.

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-I5-6600K-FC-LGA14C-Processor-BX80662I56600K/dp/B012M8M7TY/

 

[cliftonite]

Might be time to upgrade my desktop ( Q6600). The i7-6700k looks tempting. I wonder if Microcenter will have a deal on them.

 

[Absolute0]

Don't think Intel is really trying to squeeze top performance out of their CPUs. The people in this thread... we represent a tiny, tiny fraction of demanding power users. The market is demanding devices that are smaller and more energy efficient. PC sales are on serious decline. It's all about laptops, tablets, and phones. A focus is on battery life.

Integrated graphics and additional features bring something to the table. The chipset brings added functionality.

Being a power user myself, yeah it's too bad we don't have 6 Ghz 8-core CPUs right now. Performance gains have slowed down, but iGPU has been added while power consumption decreased.

I've witnessed a bit of vitriol directed towards Intel. It's not like teams of engineers are complacently holding back architectural changes and hampering performance while laughing at users and applauding the lack of competition. Moore's law is damn hard to keep going. I'm a materials scientist... the stuff going into modern silicon processing is absolutely mind blowing, and we're lucky they've been able to keep it up at all. We're pushing up against intrinsic boundaries imposed by physics and chemistry. It's not likely to get any easier either. Under 7 nm processes? Where you can count the atoms of separation, and electron migration is an issue. Honestly I'm amazed at what is possible.

As for groundbreaking architectural changes, well I'm not a computer engineer. They simply don't come around every generation. Again, I just assume it isn't easy 🙂. If it were easy, maybe more companies would try it.

 

[JM Popaleetus]

Some raw data.

 

[coercitiv]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_6700k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,14.html

Strong is the scaling.

 

[tenks]

I think you'll need to wait for native USB 3.1 for some real futureproofing. I do a lot of work cloning disk and xfering data and would really like the bandwidth when they come out with 3.1 docks. Really disappointed that z107 only has addon cards. Still prob a year away, but i think 3.1 is going to be here to stay as it will prob be integrated into iphone/android phones maybe as early as next year as even Apple made the huge jump already. They should've really called it USB 4.0 since the jump is about as bigger than 2.0-3.0 (another 10x bandwidth, 10x power, better connector). What gives man.

Anyways reviews are starting!

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-cpu-review-processor-gaming-performance/

Was just reading about the Alpine Ridge controller. Would like to see some tests/benches from it. Sounds promising. If they offered it on an x99 board, I think I'd get my upgrade ASAP.

 

[MagickMan]

What abuse? ... throwing it around the room? Maybe X99 boards we're soldered better or have stability brackets I don't know of that can withstand throwing it around? Seriously though, I don't think X99 platform buys you stability, it buys you higher hardware limits. I have a "mainstream" system and it literally never crashes. As long as you buy a decent motherboard, PS and RAM, you're golden, even with the "mainstream/consumer" platform.

"Never crashes"? Yeah. Right. 🙄 I guess you don't overclock.

Oh yeah, it's not about stability at all, must be why so many critical-use/professional systems have Z87/Z97 boards in them (not). Amirite? There's a lot more to it than expansion, Intel and their board partners put much more R&D into their workstation platforms, and that equals better, more stable overclocks due to higher QC and tighter component standards.

 

[burninatortech4]

Looks like Asus made a Z170 board with DDR3 support! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...572&cm_re=asus_skylake-_-13-132-572-_-Product

Maybe I will upgrade from my 2500k afterall.

Are you sure that's not a typo? I thought the IMC supported only DDR3L and DDR4.

 

[JM Popaleetus]

KitGuru has what we're looking for: http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i7-6700k-i5-6600k-skylake-cpu-review/

 

[Sweepr]

DDR4-2133 vs DDR4-2666 from TweakTown Review

For all the Clock for Clock tests I used memory speeds of 2133MHz for all CPUs, but I also ran the 6700K twice through once at 2133MHz and again at 2666Mhz. Since DDR4 has higher latencies than DDR3, and the Z97 and Z77 systems are running on their memory overclocked from 1600MHz to 2133MHz, I decided to also add in another standardized 6700K result named "6700K 4G/2666" which indicates that the memory on the 6700K is overclocked to 2666MHz to compensate for the increase latencies of the DDR4, later on I called this the adjusted 6700K results.

www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7274/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-cpu-z170-chipset-gt530-review/index9.html

We're not even talking about DDR4-3000+
Skylake-S loves fast DDR4 kits and faster memory helps Core i7 6700K beat Core i7 4790K despite lower Turbo clocks.

Can't take AnandTech's review seriously after seeing this.

Some raw data.

http://i.imgur.com/AVwSmnk.png

Nice job. 🙂

 

[witeken]

Don't think Intel is really trying to squeeze top performance out of their CPUs. The people in this thread... we represent a tiny, tiny fraction of demanding power users. The market is demanding devices that are smaller and more energy efficient. PC sales are on serious decline. It's all about laptops, tablets, and phones. A focus is on battery life.

Integrated graphics and additional features bring something to the table. The chipset brings added functionality.

Being a power user myself, yeah it's too bad we don't have 6 Ghz 8-core CPUs right now. Performance gains have slowed down, but iGPU has been added while power consumption decreased.

I've witnessed a bit of vitriol directed towards Intel. It's not like teams of engineers are complacently holding back architectural changes and hampering performance while laughing at users and applauding the lack of competition. Moore's law is damn hard to keep going. I'm a materials scientist... the stuff going into modern silicon processing is absolutely mind blowing, and we're lucky they've been able to keep it up at all. We're pushing up against intrinsic boundaries imposed by physics and chemistry. It's not likely to get any easier either. Under 7 nm processes? Where you can count the atoms of separation, and electron migration is an issue. Honestly I'm amazed at what is possible.

As for groundbreaking architectural changes, well I'm not a computer engineer. They simply don't come around every generation. Again, I just assume it isn't easy 🙂. If it were easy, maybe more companies would try it.

Yeah, Intel's 14nm is an amazing process: https://www.google.com/search?q=14nm+Intel+filetype%3Apdf&oq=14nm+Intel+filetype%3Apdf

 

[mscrivo]

"Never crashes"? Yeah. Right. 🙄 I guess you don't overclock.

Oh yeah, it's not about stability at all, must be why so many critical-use/professional systems have Z87/Z97 boards in them (not). Amirite? There's a lot more to it than expansion, Intel and their board partners put much more R&D into their workstation platforms, and that equals better, more stable overclocks due to higher QC and tighter component standards.

I do overclock, modestly, but ok yeah, if you're talking about stability when overclocking, then I'd agree with you, in that you'll probably have better chances with a good X99 board. All I was trying to say is that stability is not one of the reasons I'd personally look at getting X99 over Z97 or Z170, i.e. it's more than good enough to be at the bottom of the list of priorities.

And btw, many professionals do you the mainstream chipsets, those that don't necessarily need the extra cores and memory support. I'm a developer myself and our last round of systems actually used the Q77 platform with i7 3770's. When it comes to critical systems, I don't think X99 is the top choice either, but rather Intel's C-level server chipsets.

 

[phillyman36]

Are you sure that's not a typo? I thought the IMC supported only DDR3L and DDR4.

According to this all Asus boards are DDR4.

http://www.asus.com/us/site/motherboards/Z170/compare/

Either way if the board you get uses DDR3 is has to be DDR3L.

 

[mscrivo]

KitGuru has what we're looking for: http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i7-6700k-i5-6600k-skylake-cpu-review/

Really like the power consumption numbers.

 

[Doomguy]

Are you sure that's not a typo? I thought the IMC supported only DDR3L and DDR4.

Yes, DDR3L is officially supported by the Z170/Skylake CPU, but it's yet to be seen if higher voltages will be supported.

 

[ComputerGuy2006]

Seems like many people here will call anything a disappointment unless it can OC to 6Ghz or offer >50% increase in IPC.

Its a shame that many people got spoiled with SB and now expect that all the time.

Its also a shame that many people overlook the platform as a whole and focus more on the CPU or just the gaming benches. I am just as excited about moving from the Z87 to Z170 chipset. But I am just a developer and only a part-time gamer.

I just wanted larger IPC gains, OR better price, OR better overclock, OR more cores.... I got none of the 4 things I was hoping for.

Instead I got prices increase, worse OC, same cores, and very minor IPC gains compared to broadwell.

 

[Sweepr]

I just wanted larger IPC gains, OR better price, OR better overclock, OR more cores.... I got none of the 4 things I was hoping for.

Instead I got prices increase, worse OC, same cores, and very minor IPC gains compared to broadwell.

Skylake-S overclocks better than Broadwell. Most reviewers got 4.6-4.8GHz which is on par (if not slightly better) than Devil's Canyon at launch.
There was no price increase either, lanch prices don't exactly reflect MSRP.

 

[Edrick]

I just wanted larger IPC gains, OR better price, OR better overclock, OR more cores.... I got none of the 4 things I was hoping for.

Instead I got prices increase, worse OC, same cores, and very minor IPC gains compared to broadwell.

First, I do not agree with you claims. (Skylake OCs better than Broadwell & has decent IPC gains).

Second, why would you upgrade to Skylake from Broadwell which just came out last month? Different market segments as well.