Forget Broadwell, Skylake has arrived (for desktops)

See Anandtech's review at http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation, or others around the web.

I'm surprised it's available so soon - I had to double-check that it was just the other day I was reading Broadwell reviews - and it does a bit more to performance than Broadwell did. Still, it hasn't knocked my socks off. 25% IPC improvement over Sandy Bridge, and perhaps slightly higher clocks - an improvement, but not enough to justify a new CPU, motherboard, and memory, IMO.

Though if my CPU gave up the ghost tomorrow, I'd consider it. Probably wouldn't be a clear shot over Devil's Canyon, though, since it requires either DDR3L or DDR4, and is only a few percent better.

Anyone else considering upgrading, or just sticking with Nehalem/Sandy/Ivy/Haswell?

 

Nope, just got my 4690K.
Good to hear that it supports DDR3L though. DDR4 prices are still a bit high...

 

Do you think that when I upgrade to a new motherboard that supports Skyflake I can still use my 2400 MHz 64 GB DDR4 RAM or they'd be a different kind of DDR 4 RAM that need to be used with the Skyflake motherboards?

Wait a minute guys, I just saw the specs of the 6700K and it says it has 8MB cache and 4 cores. Isn't that a downgrade for me if I wanted to upgrade from my current 5930K running @ 4.4 GHz on all 6 cores with 15MB cache?

I guess I should wait for some Extreme Edition Skylake processor then heh?

The good thing I read so far is that the CPU cooler @ 75mm may enable me to use my ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 360 Sealed Liquid Cooling System for 2011 Socket, right?

 

Wait, didn't you just get your PC? Not sure if upgrading to Skylake makes sense for you...
As for RAM, as long as both CPU and mobo support the same RAM standard, you'll be fine. Heck, if DDR4 will be still around in 10 years, your DDR4 kit will still work.

 

Yes I just did get my PC as a temporary option because I was tied of waiting for Skylake... What I wanted is some professional company to build the base for me and put all those nice red cables and neatly organize them so when Skylake launches it is a simple matter of swapping the motherboard/CPU

But with this 6700K, it makes me not regret getting my current setup with the 5930K as it has more cores and more cache..... Just as I thought, it may be another 6 months till we see high end Skylake CPUs

 

Skylake's 6700k hasn't lived up to the hype so far. That 5.2 GHz sample was golden as hell and it seems 4.6 is about where it's at. What sucks for X99 folks is a new motherboard will be needed to upgrade most likely. Anyway I'm pretty happy with my 5820k even though I'm only at 4.4/4.5. I'm tempted to grab a chip from silicon lottery that will do 4.7

 

No offense but you bought a x99 system (enthusiast grade platform) for a temporary hold over for skylake (prosumer platform)?

 

Origin PC are already shipping systems with Skyflake CPUs + Motherboards but unfortunately all those motherboards are a downgrade from my X-99 Deluxe since they only support 1 GPU @ x16 or 2 GPUs @ x8. My X-99 Deluxe supports 2 GPUs @ x16 + one Intel 750 PCIe SSD @ x4 so I guess it's going to be a long wait before the high end Skyflake CPUs + motherboards are out:

 

That's because Intel has 2 lines of CPUs for the consumer market, the "mainstream" chips, and the HEDT chips. Mainstream chips are limited to quad cores, and typically have (less than) half the PCIe lanes of the HEDT platform. The mainstream chips always get released first, with the HEDT chips to come a year later. So if you bought X99 (HEDT platform) to hold out for mainstream Skylake, then you did it wrong lol.

As far as Skylake goes, it seems high DDR4 speed is necessary for the platform to perform well, as indicated by multiple reviews.

 

Skylame status quo

 

Yes. Skylake is a downgrade from Haswell-E. Skylake-E, which as has been mentioned will probably be out in about a year, will be the equivalent upgrade for Haswell-E, and should have hexacore and octocore CPUs.

It probably doesn't really need to be said, but I disagree with Ian Cutress that Sandy Bridge's time is up. IMO the extra cost for DDR4 or DDR3L (which isn't the same as plain-old DDR3 that most Sandy Bridge owners have) cancels out any IPC/clockspeed benefit over Devil's Canyon for the prosumer looking to upgrade, rather than making it a good reason to upgrade from Sandy.

 

It's time for me to upgrade my old X 58 machine and I think I will just go with an X 99 board and a 5820 Intel chip. Anybody see anything wrong in my thinking?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Well depends... How many GPU's you plan to run? Planning any pcie SSD expansion? What components are you looking will determine if you need a little more than a 5820..

 

It's worse than the Sandy/Ivy to Haswell jump IMO. I think going from Sandy to Haswell was at least consistently 10%, and something like 17% on average clock for clock. Haswell to Skylake is like what, 6-9%? Underwhelming is an understatement, more like pitiful.

Depending on how this thing overclocks (and I'm not counting the review samples), a highly clocked 4790K might actually end up edging it out rofl. What a sick joke. Good news for Sandy owners though, because they could probably hold out for yet another year, assuming USB3.0 and SATA3 aren't top priorities for them. Will definitely be a nice upgrade for Nehalem owners, but the fact it took five (or close to SEVEN years for early adopters of Bloomfield) just goes to show how much Intel has been dragging its feet.

Btw did anybody get the vibe the review sites were paid off to say that Skylake is a worthwhile upgrade for Sandy owners? I just don't see it, unless you want the platform upgrades. Nehalem yeah sure, but Sandy is still very much alive and kicking, especially if you have a 2600K @ 5GHz.

 

Well if you had a Gulftown chip, I wouldn't consider anything short of the 5960X a true CPU upgrade since you're simply moving from an older hexacore to a newer hexacore. Plus the newer hexacore has about the same overclocking headroom and power/thermal characteristics since it is Hotwell. But CPU aside, the X58 to X99 platform upgrade might be well worth it for you.

 

I agree, something didn't sit right with most major reviewers helming this as 'the upgrade' for Sandy Bridge owners.
It's hardly better than the Devils Canyon chips.
Like you said, the IPC improvements are negated by it's inability to clock as high. What's the point!
The only good thing I've read about Skylake is it can safely take 1.4volts all day every day. But even if that allows for similar clocks to 4970k then we're left with a lame IPC increase..
Gee... Wow. For God sake AMD... Pull your finger out.

 

I have a 5820k and a 980 ti with a Samsung sm951 pcie ssd works fine for me I must admit. Given the state of sli I am happy with a single 980ti on a 1440p monitor

 

As for the USB 3.0, even though Intel hadn't integrated USB 3 into the chipset at the time of Sandy Bridge, it wasn't unusual for desktops of that time to have a few USB 3.0 ports with third-party controllers, and motherboards with USB 3.0 were easy to find if you were building your own. I've got four USB 3.0 ports on my Sandy Bridge desktop (two front, two back) through an Etron USB 3.0 controller, and it's perfectly adequate. Intel's latest USB 3.0 chipsets might be more efficient than the Etron ones, but the USB 2.0 -> Etron (or Renesas, etc.) 3.0 jump is going to be the big one.

And if you don't have USB 3.0, there's plenty of PCI Express based USB 3.0 expansion cards that ought to be a big upgrade over USB 2.0 even on a PCIx x1 slot, while being much cheaper and quicker to install than upgrading the whole platform. Might not be feasible in some small-form-factor machines or prebuilt ones with a mess of wires, but for others it could work well.

But indeed, if you were happy with Sandy and didn't feel Devil's Canyon was enough to upgrade, why Skylake would be worth upgrading to I'm not sure. I'd consider it an upgrade but by no means a must-have over Sandy.

 

True, the i5-2500K has just about reached Q6600 legendary status in terms of longevity

 

@Apollo13 Yes I should've specified native USB 3.0 and SATA3 support, because even my X79 motherboard doesn't offer native USB 3.0, and instead uses ASMedia USB3.0 controllers. They don't perform quite as well, but it's a huge upgrade vs USB 2.1.

 

Looks like Intel really cheaped out on Skylake




So sick of this penny-pinching BS

 

Won't be touching my 5820K for quite awhile, its a beast. As far as thermals this chip is far from hot IMO. Underload my chip heats up to around 40s and 50s C during BF4 at 40x on 6 cores, and I just did a video render at the same settings and topped out at 63C on one core with the other cores around 58C avg. This is with a Corsair H55 AIO with a Noctua SP type fan.

 

I lost it when I read this part:

 

It's always about the bottom line sadly. Though you'd think for K processors Intel could at least have the decency to use soldered IHS and better PCB, but I guess why spend more when you can spend less and charge the same or more. Plus with the miniscule 5% improvements year after year, you have to deliberately gimp your products in order to make the next offering more attractive. Just think 4770K vs 4790K. Probably the same situation here with 6700K and whatever the Kaby Lake successor will be.

In general though more for less seems to be the norm these days with everything.

 

Yeah, it's a standard practice these days - to save up on anything they can. Very unfortunate, but even with 0,1c cut in mass production they are saving tons of cash, so in the end it's money talks and they don't care about anything else.

 

Considering how far intel's profits have fallen are you surprised?

Surely you can get that beast up to 4.4Ghz

 

I understand the bottom line all too well, but my point is for processors that are supposed to be "OC friendly", would it really hurt to use higher quality components and a soldered IHS? I imagine these move in much lower volume compared to the truly mainstream locked i5 and i7 parts, so it would barely ding their bottom line. Plus Intel could always pass the buck and charge $20 more for these processors, and I'd still gladly pay the premium.

I mean, is it any coincidence that after the steaming pile of bullcrap that AMD put out in late 2011 (and thus stopped being competitive altogether), Intel stopped using solder on the IHS on Ivy Bridge right around the same time?

 

I think I'd be willing to pay an extra penny for better cooling. Seems like a worthwhile spending of a cent to me.

Although it would be good if AnandTech clarified whether they are using 0.1 cents as an example of economies of scale, or if they suspect that really is how much the difference in cost is. If that's how much the difference really is, it comes off as really stingy, but it's not clear 0.1 cents isn't just pulled out of thin air. If we're talking $5 actual difference, I can see why they're doing it, though it would be nice to throw in the nicer one on the $20-more-expensive K-series CPUs.

 

O easily. I was running 4.4Ghz at 1.2 if I remember correctly, but I just don't feel like I need that performance yet. I do have the Intel Performance warranty thing, so if anything happens to my chip its replaced once free of charge. Though I feel like I got to a good cool chip and don't want to ruin that.

I believe Haswell-E uses solder on the IHS. There is no way my chip would run as cool as it does without solder. I think regular Haswell uses a thermal paste.

 

Yeah the LGA 2011/2011-v3 chips still use a soldered IHS, definitely a good thing as I've seen some crazy power and thermals from overclocked Haswell-E that would make Gulftown blush. Makes the 5820K even more attractive than Devil's Canyon, but you're still paying a premium for the rest of the X99 platform.

 

Pretty sure ALL LGA2011 chips use solder. Well they have to, otherwise even at stock they'd run hot, especially Haswell-E's.

And after getting a ridiculously good deal on a R4BE board, I think I might hold out until Kaby Lake-E. If that isn't a thing then Skylake-E would've been out for a while and matured, so I could always fall back on that instead. Skylake falls just short of 20% IPC improvement over Ivy Bridge especially in single threaded tasks, so it's still a bit "meh" for me.

 

Thats a goof warranty to have.

I haver running 4.5 and I get just over 4.7 with some heavy tweaking. Heat became my enemy then and I backed off. Your right the performance is currently not needed so I backed my chip down to 4.4 at adaptive 1.3v

 

But really, they could charge ten times what it cost them to keep it in and people would still buy it. This is just part of having a monopoly. Pinch pennies in every corner, cheap out on quality, AND charge more.

 

Only 1 gpu, 1 pcie in the slot, not on a card. Upgrading my graphics workstations. Usually every 3rd year, but I missed 2 years somewhere.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD