Is Skylake X worse tha Broadwell E for gaming

Wolverine607

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I have read that it is because it uses a Mesh topology where as Broadwell E used a ring bus. How much is the performance penalty if any assuming the clock speed is the same across all 8 cores.

I am looking for a good 8 core CPU and am willing to spend a premium but not so outrageous that it takes me well over $900 just for CPU.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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It really depends on the game and your willingness to tune things like the mesh, clock speed, etc.

Skylake-X should be worse in a good number of games compared to Broadwell-E out of the box, clock-for-clock, but Skylake-X can hit better clocks and with fast RAM & mesh overclocking, you can get some really nice gaming performance.

If your main use case is gaming, I wouldn't recommend Skylake-X at all. I would recommend Coffee Lake.
 
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LTC8K6

Lifer
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7820X is around $600.

I would say that SK-X is a little slower than BW-E in games, but it's a better overall chip.

Or you can go with a Ryzen chip.

But if you are looking for a gaming chip, the 6 core 8700K should be considered.
It seems to be the best gaming chip.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
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Honestly with that mesh ruining gaming performance and with the 8700K around, I don't see how they can even justify the gamer branding on X299 stuff anymore. It should seriously be marketed strictly as a workstation product. Get an 8700K when you can find one. Best gaming chip around until the 8 core version lands in about 12 months from now.
 
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Wolverine607

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I am looking for 8 cores and something that reliably supports Windows 7 and is also good for gaming.

Does Skylake X support Windows 7 good with X299.

I heard everything from Kaby Lake on Z270 and newer does not support anything older than Windows 10. I do not care for Windows 10 and am looking for good 8 core system with good Windows 7 support as far as drivers and future video cards.
 

traderjay

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I am looking for 8 cores and something that reliably supports Windows 7 and is also good for gaming.

Does Skylake X support Windows 7 good with X299.

I heard everything from Kaby Lake on Z270 and newer does not support anything older than Windows 10. I do not care for Windows 10 and am looking for good 8 core system with good Windows 7 support as far as drivers and future video cards.

I think you are out of luck, most processors released in 2017 ceased support of Windows 7. Win10 in generals offers much better multicore performance than Win 7.
 

Carfax83

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Honestly with that mesh ruining gaming performance and with the 8700K around, I don't see how they can even justify the gamer branding on X299 stuff anymore. It should seriously be marketed strictly as a workstation product. Get an 8700K when you can find one. Best gaming chip around until the 8 core version lands in about 12 months from now.

It's not the mesh architecture that's responsible for Skylake X's comparatively poor gaming performance. The mesh architecture is actually far superior to the ring bus in terms of increased bandwidth, reduced inter core latency and scalability. The problem for Skylake X is it's cache hierarchy, or to be more specific, it's L3 cache. Games always favor very large, and very fast caches since it reduces having to access system RAM. While Intel boosted the size of Skylake X's L2 cache by 400%, the L3 cache was made smaller and became non inclusive which apparently hurt gaming performance. Ars Technica did a good write up on this when Skylake X was first unveiled:

Intel says this switch from large shared caches to a smaller shared cache and large private caches boosts performance; the private caches have lower latency than the shared cache, and the quadrupling in size means they have a superior hit rate to the previous generation caches. There are sure to be trade-offs though; the old inclusive design meant that one core could read data held in another core's cache merely by accessing the last level cache. To do the same now would require the first core to snoop the level 2 cache of the second core.

Source.

I hope Intel's next X based CPU resolves this problem somehow, because that's when I'll upgrade.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
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The mesh architecture is actually far superior to the ring bus in terms of increased bandwidth, reduced inter core latency and scalability.

no

The mesh inter-core latency is better at higher core counts since it avoids using the ring copy scheme that Intel was using to send between rings but at lower core counts it's definitively worse. The gimped L3 is hurting too but the latency is the big problem.
 
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Carfax83

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no

The mesh inter-core latency is better at higher core counts since it avoids using the ring copy scheme that Intel was using to send between rings but at lower core counts it's definitively worse. The gimped L3 is hurting too but the latency is the big problem.

OK I checked some reviews, specifically the PCper one, and you're right. I didn't realize how high the inter-core latency was for the 7900x compared to the 6950x. I hope Intel finds a way to remedy this with their next generation of CPUs.
 

moonbogg

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OK I checked some reviews, specifically the PCper one, and you're right. I didn't realize how high the inter-core latency was for the 7900x compared to the 6950x. I hope Intel finds a way to remedy this with their next generation of CPUs.

Yeah when I saw those mesh results I didn't have any X299 envy. I envied what I thought it was going to be, but its a straight up workstation doohickey instead. Broadwell was the last legit HEDT. Everything else from here on out will be meshed and TIM'd and decached.
 
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Dave2150

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Yeah when I saw those mesh results I didn't have any X299 envy. I envied what I thought it was going to be, but its a straight up workstation doohickey instead. Broadwell was the last legit HEDT. Everything else from here on out will be meshed and TIM'd and decached.

Does it matter what it's made of, when a 8700k slaughters x99 in general for gaming?
 
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moonbogg

Lifer
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Does it matter what it's made of, when a 8700k slaughters x99 in general for gaming?

Yes it matters. Also, I was talking about X299 vs X99. I already recommended the guy buy an 8700K. Did you see that part or nah? And actually I should not have recommended that because I forgot he asked for an 8 core CPU and the last legit one was the 6900K which is too expensive. 7820X is a step back in gaming.
 

Carfax83

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Does it matter what it's made of, when a 8700k slaughters x99 in general for gaming?

Slaughters is pure hyperbole. 8700K's main performance enhancement is its very high clock speeds out of the box. Well, X99 CPUs can overclock as well, and most enthusiasts do overclock. So yeah, stock vs stock, the 8700K is going to be ahead due to the sheer clock speed advantage, which can be easily remedied by overclocking.

In games that have high amounts of parallelism, ie Watch Dogs 2 or BF1 multiplayer, then X99 should be roughly on par at stock clocks, and faster when overclocked.
 

jpiniero

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OK I checked some reviews, specifically the PCper one, and you're right. I didn't realize how high the inter-core latency was for the 7900x compared to the 6950x. I hope Intel finds a way to remedy this with their next generation of CPUs.

You can mitigate it to a point by OCing the mesh and using faster memory but only so much.

The mesh is the future, so I imagine Intel will improve it although how much I guess depends on what's possible and how much Intel cares about lower core count products.
 

TahoeDust

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Yes it matters. Also, I was talking about X299 vs X99. I already recommended the guy buy an 8700K. Did you see that part or nah? And actually I should not have recommended that because I forgot he asked for an 8 core CPU and the last legit one was the 6900K which is too expensive. 7820X is a step back in gaming.
The reviews written a little later with updated bios have the 7820x a little faster than the 6900k in most games. It was not a leap forward, but I would definitely not call it a step back...

https://www.techspot.com/review/1433-intel-core-i9-core-i7-skylake-x/page3.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-7820x-skylake-x,5127.html

If someone with a 6900k & 1080 ti wants to run some benchmarks with me, I would be glad to oblige.
 

Carfax83

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The reviews written a little later with updated bios have the 7820x a little faster than the 6900k in most games. It was not a leap forward, but I would definitely not call it a step back...

https://www.techspot.com/review/1433-intel-core-i9-core-i7-skylake-x/page3.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-7820x-skylake-x,5127.html

Wow, so those update UEFIs really did the trick then? The tomshardware review showed the 7900x ahead of the 7700K in the GTA V benchmark, which really surprised me seeing as the 7900x did so poorly in that benchmark in other reviews.

Since you own a x299 setup, would you say that your performance has been increasing due to UEFI updates? If I were going to upgrade to x299, I would likely buy a 7900x, since I'm already on an octa core. I'm pretty sure I won't upgrade though, because I'm waiting for PCIe 4.0 spec to arrive before I do a platform upgrade again.

If someone with a 6900k & 1080 ti wants to run some benchmarks with me, I would be glad to oblige

I have a 6900K @ 4.2ghz, and a Titan Xp. You have a significant clockspeed advantage over me though. Since I'm on air, the highest I can get from my CPU without significantly increasing the voltage is 4.3ghz at 1.28v. I keep it at 4.2ghz though because 100mhz won't make a bit of difference, and the voltage required to run stable is only 1.26v.
 
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Wolverine607

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Broadwell E 6900K it is for me. The price of it brand new was so beyond outrageous going for $1199 at MicroCenter and over $1000 almost everywhere else.

So I got a deal for a used one only 5 months old and water cooled never higher than 55C under stress test per owner selling it on ebay for only $650.

I plan clock it at 4.2GHz full time with a great air cooler with large quiet fans.
 

TahoeDust

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Nov 29, 2011
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Wow, so those update UEFIs really did the trick then? The tomshardware review showed the 7900x ahead of the 7700K in the GTA V benchmark, which really surprised me seeing as the 7900x did so poorly in that benchmark in other reviews.

Since you own a x299 setup, would you say that your performance has been increasing due to UEFI updates? If I were going to upgrade to x299, I would likely buy a 7900x, since I'm already on an octa core. I'm pretty sure I won't upgrade though, because I'm waiting for PCIe 4.0 spec to arrive before I do a platform upgrade again.

The bookmarks I have seen certainly look like the UEFI updates made an impact. Honestly, I play at 3440x1440 100Hz with a 1080 ti and I did not have any problem from the beginning.

I have a 6900K @ 4.2ghz, and a Titan Xp. You have a significant clockspeed advantage over me though. Since I'm on air, the highest I can get from my CPU without significantly increasing the voltage is 4.3ghz at 1.28v. I keep it at 4.2ghz though because 100mhz won't make a bit of difference, and the voltage required to run stable is only 1.26v.

Comparing against the a Titan Xp would probably be pointless. Skylake X is pretty good as far as volts per clock speed. The 4.8GHz I run daily only takes 1.28v.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
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The bookmarks I have seen certainly look like the UEFI updates made an impact. Honestly, I play at 3440x1440 100Hz with a 1080 ti and I did not have any problem from the beginning.



Comparing against the a Titan Xp would probably be pointless. Skylake X is pretty good as far as volts per clock speed. The 4.8GHz I run daily only takes 1.28v.

Yeah those clock like crazy. I also have the same resolution and GPU as you and I can get all worked up over CPU performance, but for me it doesn't matter being stuck at 100hz, lol. I'd be fine with a 2600K I think haha.
 
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TahoeDust

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Nov 29, 2011
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Yeah those clock like crazy. I also have the same resolution and GPU as you can I get all worked up over CPU performance, but for me it doesn't matter being stuck at 100hz, lol. I'd be fine with a 2600K I think haha.
Haha. I upgraded from a 2700k. I only noticed a gaming difference in a few titles...PUBG was a good difference.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Honestly with that mesh ruining gaming performance and with the 8700K around, I don't see how they can even justify the gamer branding on X299 stuff anymore. It should seriously be marketed strictly as a workstation product. Get an 8700K when you can find one. Best gaming chip around until the 8 core version lands in about 12 months from now.
Those who get suckered in by the marketing kind of deserve to suffer for being sucked in in the first place.