Hardware Intel Skylake: Intel Z170 Chipset and Core i7-6700K Review

The 6600K doesn't have HT.

 

Despite the upgrade itch I am not sold. If I had to buy a new system today I would add a little extra cash and go X99. At least that would have some tangible benefits, and, in a couple of years I would be able to buy from ebay some 18-core xeon monster.

So.. waiting for Skylake-E now, hopefully they will skip Broadwell-E so it won't be too long.

 

Typo on my side, rest assured when it comes to it, I won't order the wrong one corrected the original now

 

On the one hand, a stock Skylake chip can now outrun my OC'd Sandy Bridge chip (and obviously the Skylake CPU will OC well on top of that).

On the other hand, my PC hardly feels slow or in need of an upgrade, especially for gaming at 1080p. Maybe Skylake-E, Kaby Lake or even Zen will tempt me...

 

I don't understand that comment, why could it not be responsible?

If he's using a cheap, sh*tty 'brand X' PSU, I could understand that quite happily chugging along at 130W, then suddenly throwing a wobbly when asked to deliver 300W or 400W+ while playing a game.

Likewise, maybe the other games he'd played didn't consistently max out the GPU to consistently draw that much power, or maybe they had, but the damage to the PSU had been cumulative rather than sudden - leading him to conclude it was one specific game when it was just a coincidence.

It seems entirely feasible to me, what am I not understanding?

 

Indeed any level in Crysis 3 which has a significant volume of grass is very hard on the CPU.

This is pretty common knowledge so I am surprised at Bit's comment in regard to this.

 

Agree with Maverik-sg1 ... been maintaining my 2500k for years, just upgrading SSDs and GPUs.

One thing I'd be interested in seeing is how this chip -- with it's iGPU -- under Win10 and DX12 -- perform / benefit discrete graphics cards in tandem. OF course, we'd need to compare with games that are written for DX12 ... haven't play it, yet, but maybe add some DX12 games to the list to show true performance benefits.

 

No direct x 12 games are launched yet. Be late November before the first few appear I'd imagine.

 

i still got the i7-920 so anything above the i7-2000 range is a massive jump for me make chrome go faster

at the moment though i am mostly GPU limited as my VIdeo card died so on a 650 Ti at the moment

(i should update my sig as it's a bit out of date)

 

Still using, gaming and happy with my i7 2500k, there is nothing I do that warrants an upgrade, not even close to it.

CPU's will need to really give a big and real world noticeable boost before I upgrade.
This isn't it.

 

It's a shame hardly anyone has explored overclocking the BCLK, only review I've seen so far to do so is OC3D and there are some major improvements.

They didn't do any gaming tests with a discrete GPU, would be very interested to know what improvements these huge performance gains would make. I guess I'll have to see for myself in a few days or so.

 

My guess very little gains in gaming. Unless running at 640x480. Anandtech shows all the latest cpus running at 1080p and theres 1-2 fps across the entire range of cpus. Despite IPC been higher on the latest and greatest.

 

Yes but even they only used the multiplier, not the Bclk At higher CPU and memory speeds, the motherboard bandwidth could be acting as a bottleneck unless it is allowed to breathe. Have you seen the results in the OC3D graphs compared to other reviews that only use the multiplier and ram speed? It beats hexacores in many cases.

 

Nope, changing the BCLK makes barely any difference as the rest of the system is still running at 100MHz (such as the PCIE lanes) when you hit the right straps. The only real reason to change BCLK is to be able to hit higher RAM frequencies. The increase in bandwidth is minimal and it will only be noticed in benchmarks.

The reason it makes next to no difference is because games at 1080P and above are almost 100% tied down by the GPU, especially when the resolution goes above this. Yes, you still need a CPU to power the draw calls required, but the GPU is far more important at >1080P resolutions.

 

What about the interconnect pathways between the cpu and everything else, like the memory. There is usually a bandwidth factor there. For instance lynnfield has 2GB/s DMI for the processor to communicate with everything else, before it even reaches the PCIe strap.

How do you explain the OC3D results where more often than not the 200MHz bclk and 24x multiplier i7 6700 beats hexacore i7's and shows a massive lead compared to overclocked Haswell where in most reviews they were nearly neck and neck? No other site I've seen has taken the time to explore the potential properly.

 

I'll tell you what, sir. I have a Skylake system on the way to me by the end of the week for review purposes. I'll test out your theory and give some of my results.

Lynnfield is a completely different beast compared to Haswell or Skylake. That's like comparing apples with oranges.

 

I'll do the same, which mobo are you getting?

 

When are the prices of the 6700K going reach the £264 quoted in your review? They're £335 at Scan and Overclockers and £310 at CCL. That's a hell of a difference to £264. and a few % off the review to me.

 

The 6700k is £350 just now -_-

 

Are these significantly faster, for equivalent core count and clock speed, than an original Core i7 series?