Skylake Launches Beginning of August

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150618PD203.html
That's faster than I had expected.

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.techpowerup.com/214569/skylak...mance.html
Looks like another 10% CPU increase, and the majority of improvement is going into the iGPU.

[SickBeast]

http://www.techpowerup.com/214569/skylak...mance.html
Looks like another 10% CPU increase, and the majority of improvement is going into the iGPU.

10% faster than Broadwell? That's pretty good if true, Broadwell was already ~7% faster than Haswell.

It looks like the L4 cache makes a really big difference in certain applications. If the developers can learn to exploit it, we could see huge gains from this generation. Certain benchmarks were 30% faster. DDR4 is going to be blazing fast once they refine it as well.

Wow, they're saying the iGPU will be 50% faster than Broadwell, that's very impressive if true. I'm thinking that will make it as powerful as a GTX 750Ti. nVidia is in trouble if the iGPU is really this powerful.

[BoFox]

I have several awesome Z97, X79, Z87 motherboards lying around in retail boxes.. Oh boy, gotta sell them off, going for Skylake instead!!! Perfect timing with Windows 10 and new HDD's, SSD's plummeting in price!!

Thank goodness Microcenter is still only 4 miles away from my new home now (before just 2 miles away) - massive discounts on mobo and CPU, and SSD's/HDD's!!

[SickBeast]

What are you doing with all those motherboards? What CPU do you have now?

I'm hoping my 4690k will last me 5 years, personally.

You're very lucky living so close to a Microcenter.

[BoFox]

Same as yours.

Bought them at irresistible clearance prices (sometimes even more than 50% off), while planning a new PC build, but the build was delayed many many times, as we already have 3 PC's, 3 laptops, several tablets and smartphones. So much for me to manage, with 5 kids, and so little free time..

That's why I get real pissed at "time-sinks", lol.

[SickBeast]

Wow that's a lot of technology! I thought I had a lot! Here is my gear:

- asus sandy bridge i3 laptop with 16gb of ram
- my main rig (4690k, 280x, 16gb ram)
- sony xperia z tablet
- hipstreet w8 tablet
- lg g3 phone
- moto g phone (my son loves this phone for minecraft)

My laptop has lasted forever! No miso soup!
- xperia z3 phone
- iphone 4s (old phone, relegated to ibooks duty and games for my daughter)

[BoFox]

Whoa, a laptop with 16GB? That must've costed a lot back then. Why 16GB for a Sandy Bridge i3 laptop??

Oops, sorry forgot you on vacation now!

Don't forget to try the muffalettas in New Orleans. Ask a local eating out at a unique restaurant there about where the best muffaletta would be at. Crawfish boil is crazy good as well. There's Emeril's restaurant that serves kick ass crawfish/prawn/shrimp dishes. Bet you never tried Okra before? Grits? Grits-a-yaya? I'd kill for crawfish scampi!

Edit - I have Tegra Note 7, Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 with 4G, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1" with 4G, Galaxy S3, the original S, three ZTE Awe's (3G, unlimited for only $25/mo with a grandfathered plan under Virgin Mobile (using Sprint coverage, and 3G is still plenty for a 4" smartphone that only uses 800x480 resolution which is still decent), a couple Kyocera Hydro Vibe (waterproof 4G 4.5" phones), etc.. trying to remember all of them, lol. Kids use them on and off, sometimes they're just paperweight. Argh. I'm going to ditch my old Galaxy S3 as the main phone (still awesome for taking pictures) and upgrade to Galaxy Note 3/4 soon, for cheap (hate to spend too much on phones, and refuse any contract plans because if there's a MASSIVELY better phone coming out 6 months later, I want to be able to move on).

Talk to ya more when you get back. Enjoy as much as possible and treat it like a honeymoon, lol!

[SteelCrysis]

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-s-line...6600k-225/
These prices for Skylake would be great, if they turn out to be true.

[SickBeast]

Whoa, a laptop with 16GB?  That must've costed a lot back then.  Why 16GB for a Sandy Bridge i3 laptop??

Oops, sorry forgot you on vacation now!  

Don't forget to try the muffalettas in New Orleans.  Ask a local eating out at a unique restaurant there about where the best muffaletta would be at.  Crawfish boil is crazy good as well.  There's Emeril's restaurant that serves kick ass crawfish/prawn/shrimp dishes.  Bet you never tried Okra before?  Grits?  Grits-a-yaya?  I'd kill for crawfish scampi!

Edit - I have Tegra Note 7, Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 with 4G, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1" with 4G, Galaxy S3, the original S, three ZTE Awe's (3G, unlimited for only $25/mo with a grandfathered plan under Virgin Mobile (using Sprint coverage, and 3G is still plenty for a 4" smartphone that only uses 800x480 resolution which is still decent), a couple Kyocera Hydro Vibe (waterproof 4G 4.5" phones), etc..  trying to remember all of them, lol.  Kids use them on and off, sometimes they're just paperweight.  Argh.  I'm going to ditch my old Galaxy S3 as the main phone (still awesome for taking pictures) and upgrade to Galaxy Note 3/4 soon, for cheap (hate to spend too much on phones, and refuse any contract plans because if there's a MASSIVELY better phone coming out 6 months later, I want to be able to move on).

Talk to ya more when you get back.  Enjoy as much as possible and treat it like a honeymoon, lol!

I bought the 16gb of ram for something silly like $40 when the price of ram plummeted several years ago. It only came with 6gb initially. I like 16gb of ram, I find that it makes the computer more responsive and it makes my SSDs last a lot longer.

I didn't eat much in New Orleans. We wound up at a local grocery store called Rouses IIRC. We were only there for one night; they say you should always stay in a hotel the night before your cruise because your flight can get delayed (which ours did!).

We had a really nice trip. New Orleans is a beautful city with a rich culture and very friendly people. I was very impressed. It was HOT there though, I have never seen heat like that, it was insane, 44C with the humidex. The only place hotter on our trip was Belize.

We also stopped at Roatan which is a small island in Honduras and we went to Cozumel Mexico. The beaches were very nice but the beaches in Cuba are far and away much nicer. Now that the embargo has been partially lifted I encourage all of you to visit Cuba, it's really an amazing trip!

We're all home safely now but our cat is quite sick, I'm hoping we don't have to put her down. She is over 20 years old.

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyl...,4252.html
Tom's says the "Core i7-6700K should be priced around $350, while Core i5-6600K is expected to sell for $243."

[SickBeast]

Wow it looks great, thanks for the link! It overclocks much better than I expected. The only bad news is that the IGP is weaker than Broadwell; I was hoping that it would be faster.

[SteelCrysis]

Yeah, but the Skylake iGPU still roughly equals or beats the APUs. So it's still a win for Intel iGPUs, and the death of the APUs.

[SickBeast]

Yeah, but the Skylake iGPU still roughly equals or beats the APUs.  So it's still a win for Intel iGPUs, and the death of the APUs.

Most people won't use the iGPU unless they have an HTPC or a laptop. I was really hoping that they could beat out a card like the GTX 750 with the Skylake iGPU but they didn't. It's too bad. It won't affect most gamers but I could see some laptop users actually preferring Broadwell.

[BoFox]

Whoa, a laptop with 16GB?  That must've costed a lot back then.  Why 16GB for a Sandy Bridge i3 laptop??

Oops, sorry forgot you on vacation now!  

Don't forget to try the muffalettas in New Orleans.  Ask a local eating out at a unique restaurant there about where the best muffaletta would be at.  Crawfish boil is crazy good as well.  There's Emeril's restaurant that serves kick ass crawfish/prawn/shrimp dishes.  Bet you never tried Okra before?  Grits?  Grits-a-yaya?  I'd kill for crawfish scampi!

Edit - I have Tegra Note 7, Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 with 4G, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1" with 4G, Galaxy S3, the original S, three ZTE Awe's (3G, unlimited for only $25/mo with a grandfathered plan under Virgin Mobile (using Sprint coverage, and 3G is still plenty for a 4" smartphone that only uses 800x480 resolution which is still decent), a couple Kyocera Hydro Vibe (waterproof 4G 4.5" phones), etc..  trying to remember all of them, lol.  Kids use them on and off, sometimes they're just paperweight.  Argh.  I'm going to ditch my old Galaxy S3 as the main phone (still awesome for taking pictures) and upgrade to Galaxy Note 3/4 soon, for cheap (hate to spend too much on phones, and refuse any contract plans because if there's a MASSIVELY better phone coming out 6 months later, I want to be able to move on).

Talk to ya more when you get back.  Enjoy as much as possible and treat it like a honeymoon, lol!

I bought the 16gb of ram for something silly like $40 when the price of ram plummeted several years ago.  It only came with 6gb initially.  I like 16gb of ram, I find that it makes the computer more responsive and it makes my SSDs last a lot longer.

I didn't eat much in New Orleans.  We wound up at a local grocery store called Rouses IIRC.  We were only there for one night; they say you should always stay in a hotel the night before your cruise because your flight can get delayed (which ours did!).

We had a really nice trip.  New Orleans is a beautful city with a rich culture and very friendly people.  I was very impressed.  It was HOT there though, I have never seen heat like that, it was insane, 44C with the humidex.  The only place hotter on our trip was Belize.

We also stopped at Roatan which is a small island in Honduras and we went to Cozumel Mexico.  The beaches were very nice but the beaches in Cuba are far and away much nicer.  Now that the embargo has been partially lifted I encourage all of you to visit Cuba, it's really an amazing trip!

We're all home safely now but our cat is quite sick, I'm hoping we don't have to put her down.  She is over 20 years old.

Wow.

Thanks for the tip about Cuba!  It should be very cheap to visit, given its economic status.  I'd love to check it out. 

[BoFox]

Yay, looks like Skylake is a much better overclocker than Broadwell. 4.4GHz average o/c for Broadwell, vs 4.7 GHz average for Skylake.

Hope this holds to be true with more reviews coming out soon.

[SickBeast]

I can take my entire family to Cuba for a week for about $3000CAD including all taxes. That works out to about $2300USD. That includes the flights and all the food, drinks, and lodging is included. You just need to bring some US cash to tip the waiters and stuff. When I checked that price it was departing in August. If you go in the off season you can get it for about half that price which is an amazing deal.

[BoFox]

Wow, I'm gonna do research on Cuba!!! Loved Puerto Rico - no reason for me to not love Cuba as well!

---------------------------------------------
*WELPS*



http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-sky...neration/6

Interesting chart!        The idea of this chart..................   from the one that took away from ABT?  At least Anandtech followed, but then took some back...

[SickBeast]

I wonder why it needs more voltage than Haswell on a smaller node. My 4690k does 4.2ghz on only 1.1v. I can do 4.3ghz on 1.15v. That's .1v less, quite a bit of voltage!

The Anandtech review is telling me that Skylake is actually a bit of a turkey if you're a serious gamer.

[BoFox]

Nah, it does overclock about 300MHz higher than Broadwell, which is great!!! Both my Ivy Bridge and Haswell (Devils Canyon) topped out at 4.5GHz for 100% stable 24/7 operation.

At long last, I'd be able to move past that, to 4.6-4.7GHz, for sure, along with a decent IPC increase.

[SickBeast]

It's a 2.6% IPC increase.

Discrete graphics card performance decreases on Skylake over Haswell.

[BoFox]

http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-sky...neration/9


About 6% over Haswell for these apps, with DDR4 memory at a lowly 2133MHz.  See how it actually loses out to Haswell in 7-Zip?


I'm very disappointed that Skylake doesn't have the same EDRAM L4 cache as Broadwell.  Why, Intel????  What's so special about Skylake, then??????  BOOOOORRING...

Haswell is the biggest leap, of the previous 5 generations.  See:

[SickBeast]

I think the biggest thing with Skylake is DDR4, but unfortunately with the current RAM it's not making much difference at all aside from the iGPU.

The 128mb of L4 cache was probably very expensive for Intel to manufacture. I'm also thinking that it might have been the reason for Broadwell being so badly delayed.

This opens up some room for AMD to come in and finally do something. Aren't they working on a new core?

[BoFox]

Gstanford is right about games needing faster bandwidth access.  HardOCP's review shows games benefiting from overclocked DDR4 speeds, especially at 2666MHz, but some games still lack compared to ordinary Haswell i7-4790K with DDR3 at only 1866MHz.  Right now, I'm using DDR3 at 2133MHz with my Haswell.  

See how well Broadwell does at only 3.3GHz:


http://techreport.com/review/28751/intel...reviewed/6

This game is one of the rare games that truly show Skylake's shining colors over Haswell (13% improvement, or maybe about 11% IPC improvement, if the actual running clock for the Haswell was around 4.2GHz for that multi-threaded game, with the Skylake running at around 4.1GHz)??????

Yet, it still embarrassingly loses out to the Broadwell running at a lowly 3.3GHz.  (Broadwell and Haswell with DDR3 at 1600Mhz CAS9 vs Skylake DDR4-2133 @ CAS15)

I honestly was expecting Skylake to be a better "tock" than this.  Imagine Broadwell overclocked at 4.3GHz, vs Skylake at 4.7GHz (only 9% clock increase)?  The difference would be even more dramatic, as the gap is lessened from 3.3GHz vs 4.0GHz (21% clock increase).


Z97 mobo owners could just swap out CPU's to Broadwell in the future and forget about Skylake...   if all they care about is gaming.  Yep, I'm mighty tempted to just wait Skylake out.  Pissed at Intel for not pushing as hard as they could (going 2 steps forward, but then 1 step backward with L4 EDRAM cache).

[SickBeast]

Broadwell is even more of a turkey. It can't overclock worth beans. There are only a few outside cases where it's better even at such a low clockspeed.

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.techspot.com/review/1041-inte...age14.html

Well, This is Disappointing

The rumor mill has been working overtime on stories about Skylake’s performance. PCOnline showed over a 20% performance increase in Photoshop for example, yet we found the Core i7-6700K to be 5% slower. Other reports claimed up to 40% better integrated graphics performance over Broadwell and that certainly wasn't anything close to reality, at least when comparing the 6700K to the 5775C.

These claims could have been made regarding the mobile Skylake CPUs, so we will have to wait and see how that shakes out.

After our results indicated that the 6700K was no faster than the 4790K, we retested with the expectation of finding at least a 10% increase. However, it became clear that there was no extra performance and Intel’s own PR material only claimed "up to" a 10% increase, which means you can expect just a few percent for the most part.

Intel says you can look forward to as much as 10% more performance from the 6700K when testing with SPEC CPU2006. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain a copy of this benchmark in time for the Skylake launch, but we did test with a wide range of applications and failed to find anywhere near a 10% gain.

The only results Intel provided that could be compared to our own were recorded using Cinebench R15 where Intel's in-house testing matched our own.

Since I can't confirm our numbers with Intel or get answers to any of the dozen questions I have regarding Skylake's performance and features, we just have to hope everything is in order.

For now it looks like the Core i7-6700K is at best able to match the 4790K. I can't put into words how surprisingly and ultimately disappointing that is.

Where Skylake does offer a few advantages over Haswell is in the new platform, more precisely the Z170 chipset which is superior to the Z97 chipset in several ways. The Z170 enjoys 40% more high speed I/O lanes (USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0) over the Z97 chipset, while PCIe 3.0 storage support with Intel RST has also been added.

The key advantage of the Core i7-6700K over the 4790K is its improved efficiency and superior overclocking capabilities. Not only is the 6700K more flexible when it comes to overclocking but we found the results to be much more promising as well. Our sample had no trouble running at 4.8GHz on air which is 300MHz higher than our 4790K. We hope this is the norm.

Those coming from much older platforms will see some value in Skylake, at least the platform brings some new features and improved efficiency. Those already running Haswell gear will want to pass and the same can likely be said about Ivy Bridge users.

Those with a Sandy Bridge processor might be tempted, though we suspect 2500K owners will hold out for a more substantial upgrade. Just last week we revisited older Intel CPUs and found that some four-year-old Sandy Bridge models still had plenty of life left in them, not including their overclocking potential.

[SickBeast]

[BoFox]

Broadwell is even more of a turkey.  It can't overclock worth beans.  There are only a few outside cases where it's better even at such a low clockspeed.

As a gamer, I'd rather have a Broadwell oc'ed to 4.2Ghz than a Skylake oc'ed to 4.7GHz or even 4.8GHz.  Other apps do not mean very much to me.

If non-gaming apps matter a lot, that's what the 6-core and 8-core "E" variants are for.  If I really cared about apps, I'd just go for Haswell-E or wait for Skylake-E. 

Looks like Intel is ready to have another "tock" on 14nm real soon - that naturally comes after something as lackluster as Skylake:  Kaby Lake
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9447/intel...-kaby-lake

I'm hoping that Kaby Lake will feature the L4 EDRAM cache once again.... Seems plausible?

[SickBeast]

Intel needs to make an enthusiast CPU with no iGPU and 6 or 8 cores for under $300.

[SteelCrysis]

Intel needs to make an enthusiast mainstream i7 CPU with no iGPU and 6 or 8 cores for under $300.

[BoFox]

[SickBeast]

ROFL hahahaha

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2015/a...g_i7-6700k

Despite fairly incremental jumps in voltage to hit 4.6GHz, even 1.45V wasn’t enough to get 4.7GHz stable, and I wasn’t willing to risk the chip to go past that even though it seemed to have the thermal headroom. Incidentally, these results map fairly well against the good Dr. Ian Cutress’s experience over at AnandTech. When looking at his results, though, it seems like Intel may be setting unnecessarily high VIDs on the i7-6700K, as he was able to solidly undervolt his chips and still overclock, while my own overclocks didn’t require much massaging of the VCore until ~4.5GHz.

http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-sky...eration/23

The platform changes as well. The voltage regulators inside Haswell CPUs move back out on to the motherboard as they generated too much heat inside the CPU. This is good for overclockers, but means the required components on Z170 motherboards, and price, has the potential to go up.

[ocre]

This is depressing..

So so depressing

[RolloTheGreat]

This is depressing..

So so depressing

Could be worse:

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2015/s...nerational

First, while Skylake’s instructions-per-clock gains are a little underwhelming, its memory controller is something else entirely. We’ll need to see how it handles DDR3L – and we’ll be testing that in greater detail soon enough – but it has none of the scaling hiccups any of its predecessors have. Skylake’s memory controller is incredibly robust, and Skylake seems to overall be more efficient with memory in general.

Second, DDR4 just doesn’t have the latency issues the transition from DDR2 to DDR3 did. In fact, it’s only when you’re making the C16 to C18 jump that overall latency starts to creep up, but that’s solved almost immediately by just going to the next speed grade.

Ultimately, DDR4 draws less power, runs cooler, and delivers more bandwidth-per-clock than the venerable DDR3, and it has the scaling headroom that DDR3 lacked in both capacity and raw bandwidth. In other words, it’s a worthy successor.

[ocre]

I really don't know.......

Skylake was my plan, but now.......


Are there gonna be anymore broadwell CPUs?

[BoFox]

Well, there are Xeon Broadwells (covered in Anandtech's article) but they're more expensive - no sense to choose them over the i7-5775c (which is just like "K").

What about the X99 platform with a 6-core 5820K for only $30 more than Skylake? That way, you won't feel like downgrading from your current 6c/12t Xeon.

[ocre]

hmmm.

thats isnt that exciting though. I guess I should have known this was gonna happen.

The haswell e would be a step up if i overclocked it. But, its just no where near the step i wanted. I guess i will sit on what i got for a while longer.......but I will have to make some decision by the time 16nm GPUs are available. Oh well.......wait wait wait