Question What is the generational improvement between 2nd-Gen Core (Sandy Bridge) quads, and 6th-Gen (Skylake) quads?

[VirtualLarry]

I told my friend that the newer Skylake system with DDR4-2666 and an i5-6600 was 30% faster than his older i5-2400 Sandy Bridge system with DDR3.

Was I accurate?

 

[Johnny Ringo]

I told my friend that the newer Skylake system with DDR4-2666 and an i5-6600 was 30% faster than his older i5-2400 Sandy Bridge system with DDR3.

Was I accurate?

Fairly accurate according to this comparison of benchmarks of those two CPU's.

UserBenchmark: Intel Core i5-2400 vs i5-6600

 

[UsandThem]

Close. Anandtech's review concluded Sky Lake was around 25% faster than Sandy Bridge.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/23

Overall, Skylake is not an earth shattering leap in performance. In our IPC testing, with CPUs at 3 GHz, we saw a 5.7% increase in performance over a Haswell processor at the same clockspeed and ~ 25% gains over Sandy Bridge. That 5.7% value masks the fact that between Haswell and Skylake, we have Broadwell, marking a 5.7% increase for a two generation gap.

 

[zir_blazer]

Close. Anandtech's review concluded Sky Lake was around 25% faster than Sandy Bridge.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/23

That was before all the Spectre and Meltdown stuff, which had much harsher penalties on generations older than Haswell if I recall correctly. Note that modern Windows versions should update the Microcode on their own, so using an old BIOS version won't save you from the mitigations performance penalty.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you're going to bring Smeltdown into it, people really shouldn't be using anything older than Comet Lake if they can avoid it.