Kabylake review from [H]. This is really bad :(

[unseenmorbidity]

Cannon Lake is HEDT and U/Y series only. Coffee Lake will come next for high performance notebooks/desktops (third gen 14nm product), and after that will come Ice Lake, at which point the high perf CPUs and low power CPUs converge.

So, yes.

Interesting. We saw 0% IPC gain with kabylake, and Coffee Lake will be the 4th CPU on 14nm. Broadwell, Skylake, Kabylake, and then Coffee lake.

Unless they are offering a 6 core for $300-350, then I don't see the point.

 

[Sweepr]

Interesting. We saw 0% IPC gain with kabylake

Here's a crazy thought. Maybe because they use the exact same cores?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Interesting. We saw 0% IPC gain with kabylake, and Coffee Lake will be the 4th CPU on 14nm. Broadwell, Skylake, Kabylake, and then Coffee lake.

And I hate to break it to you, but the leaks show Coffee Lake uses the same Kaby Lake core, with the main improvement seemingly being a move to six cores. Skylake core will have a nice long life in desktops, for better or for worse.

 

[Sweepr]

And I hate to break it to you, but the leaks show Coffee Lake uses the same Kaby Lake core, with the main improvement seemingly being a move to six cores. Skylake core will have a nice long life in desktops, for better or for worse.

HEDT might offer the performance per clock boost we're looking for. Skylake-X with 1MB L2 per core and up to 10C/20T is more exciting than Intel's mainstream products to me.

 

[unseenmorbidity]

And I hate to break it to you, but the leaks show Coffee Lake uses the same Kaby Lake core, with the main improvement seemingly being a move to six cores. Skylake core will have a nice long life in desktops, for better or for worse.

Skylake-x might be the best option for an upgrade, if Zen doesn't work out.

Do you think they will get rid of the dual cores when they make the 6 core CPUs mainstream?

 

[Sweepr]

There is no dual-core Coffee Lake SKU. Kaby Lake is probably the last Intel CPU family with desktop dual-cores.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Skylake-x might be the best option for an upgrade, if Zen doesn't work out.

Do you think they will get rid of the dual cores when they make the 6 core CPUs mainstream?

My guess? Intel rebrands higher-clocked Kaby Lake dual-core parts as Pentium/Celeron. i3, i5, and i7 get the quad/hex Coffee Lake chips.

 

[Eug]

Hardware decoding for battery life purposes I suppose? Or do you have issues software decoding?

As for the YouTube videos. Do you find the quality of the hardware encoder sufficient? I generally notice it to be of noticeable lower quality compared to Handbrake, especially at the low bit rates required by YouTube. Just curious.

Besides other things video related (including big ones like mobile battery life and video playback without the fan going into vacuum cleaner mode when viewing 4K HEVC video, as well as multitasking during such video playback), don't forget about one very huge feature which is 4K DRM support: Netflix 4K, Sony 4K, etc. don't work at all on Skylake.

Eventually there will be GPU support but right now even the latest high dollar GPUs don't support it. So if you already have Skylake desktop you can hope that your $$$ GPU eventually gets support, or else you can hope to spend even more $$$ when a new GPU model gets support. If you already have a Skylake laptop you'll probably just have to accept it will never get proper 4K streaming support. If you are buying a CPU for 2017, the only option IMO is Kaby Lake (or later), if you have any interest in streaming 4K.

One can argue about whether or not 4K DRM is evil, but the bottom line is that 4K DRM has effectively obsoleted anything older than Kaby Lake, for people interested in legal 4K streaming.

 

[Minot]

I think I'm going with an i7 7700K upgrade in 2017. I'm still running on my i7 3770K at 4.0 GHz slight OC. The overall system upgrade with memory, graphics, and storage components should be worth it. I agree the days of enthusiasts buying a budget CPU and making it run like the flagship are long since gone. I miss those days...

 

[Dave2150]

Besides other things video related (including big ones like mobile battery life and video playback without the fan going into vacuum cleaner mode when viewing 4K HEVC video, as well as multitasking during such video playback), don't forget about one very huge feature which is 4K DRM support: Netflix 4K, Sony 4K, etc. don't work at all on Skylake.

Eventually there will be GPU support but right now even the latest high dollar GPUs don't support it. So if you already have Skylake desktop you can hope that your $$$ GPU eventually gets support, or else you can hope to spend even more $$$ when a new GPU model gets support. If you already have a Skylake laptop you'll probably just have to accept it will never get proper 4K streaming support. If you are buying a CPU for 2017, the only option IMO is Kaby Lake (or later), if you have any interest in streaming 4K.

One can argue about whether or not 4K DRM is evil, but the bottom line is that 4K DRM has effectively obsoleted anything older than Kaby Lake, for people interested in legal 4K streaming.

I somehow don't think there's a huge market interested in streaming legal 4k to a laptop, so this point is moot IMO.

 

[frozentundra123456]

There is no dual-core Coffee Lake SKU. Kaby Lake is probably the last Intel CPU family with desktop dual-cores.

If this roadmap is accurate, the best news I see there is the 4+3e (standard??) for the u chips. If that holds up, and they dont have to sacrifice too much clockspeed, there could be a nice bump in both igpu and cpu performance. I am also intrigued by the hex core on the desktop, but am afraid it may be either overpriced or gimped to avoid competition with the HEDT platform. So will Coffee Lake eventually replace SL/KL, or will they be sold simultaneously? I have a hard time seeing intel not offering dual core chips.

 

[Eug]

I somehow don't think there's a huge market interested in streaming legal 4k to a laptop, so this point is moot IMO.

Same limitation applies to a desktop though. If you buy a high end desktop now with gorgeous 4K+ screen, you get no support for 4K streaming unless you get Kaby Lake. So it is foolish to get one without Kaby Lake unless you are saving big money on a closeout pre-built model or something.

But even for a laptop if you're buying a higher end one they come with high gamut screens now. 4K streams are the ones that support HDR. You don't get that with 1080p streams. And of course, lots of people use laptops with external screens too.

 

[Sweepr]

If this roadmap is accurate, the best news I see there is the 4+3e (standard??) for the u chips. If that holds up, and they dont have to sacrifice too much clockspeed, there could be a nice bump in both igpu and cpu performance.

Indeed. I expect Coffee Lake 4+3e to be more popular than current Iris 'U' SKUs - and it would be a huge upgrade if you're still on Broadwell-U/Skylake-U 2+2 by then.

I am also intrigued by the hex core on the desktop, but am afraid it may be either overpriced or gimped to avoid competition with the HEDT platform. So will Coffee Lake eventually replace SL/KL, or will they be sold simultaneously? I have a hard time seeing intel not offering dual core chips.

It will probably replace all but the dual-core SKUs at the bottom. According to the latest benchmarks a 7700K will hold its own in applications against 8C/16T from the competition while still dominating CPU limited gaming, so no hurry from Intel. CFL-S 6+2 at 3.5 GHz+ can coexist with entry level HEDT, no need to gimp it.

 

[jpiniero]

You also have to remember that Skylake-X will probably have some amount of ST improvement over the mainstream Skylake. How much, who knows.

I have a hard time seeing intel not offering dual core chips.

They are, the 2+2 U/Y Cannonlake. That's the standard.

 

[Dave2150]

Same limitation applies to a desktop though. If you buy a high end desktop now with gorgeous 4K+ screen, you get no support for 4K streaming unless you get Kaby Lake. So it is foolish to get one without Kaby Lake unless you are saving big money on a closeout pre-built model or something.

But even for a laptop if you're buying a higher end one they come with high gamut screens now. 4K streams are the ones that support HDR. You don't get that with 1080p streams. And of course, lots of people use laptops with external screens too.

Anyone watching TV on their desktop PC is most likely an 'enthusiast' or a 'nerd' - I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that they will have a compatible GPU by the time there is any wealth of content available in 4K to stream.

Perhaps Vega will support it in a few months, I'm guessing Volta will for sure, so pointless putting much emphasis on IGPU's that 99% will have disabled anyway.

Plus you're assuming that everyone has an internet connection that's able to stream 4K, I can assure you they don't. Bluray 4K will still be more popular for movies for quite a while.

 

[Eug]

Anyone watching TV on their desktop PC is most likely an 'enthusiast' or a 'nerd' - I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that they will have a compatible GPU by the time there is any wealth of content available in 4K to stream.

Perhaps Vega will support it in a few months, I'm guessing Volta will for sure, so pointless putting much emphasis on IGPU's that 99% will have disabled anyway.

Plus you're assuming that everyone has an internet connection that's able to stream 4K, I can assure you they don't. Bluray 4K will still be more popular for movies for quite a while.

Uhhhh, what? Streaming 4K Netflix is 15.6 Mbps. You basically need a 20 Mbps connection for that. While not everyone has that, it is extremely common. In fact, out of all of my friends, I have the slowest connection at 25 Mbps down.

UHD 4K Blu-ray adoption OTOH is at a big disadvantage. Not only do you have to buy a compatible TV with one main point that most older 4K TVs and most older 4K receivers don't actually support UHD 4K Blu-ray, you also have to pay for a UHD player and UHD discs. In contrast, for 4K streaming, all you need is a 4K TV with a streaming app built in.