Are you upgrading to Skylake?

[Udgnim]

have an i7 4770k and use my PC primarily for games & Internet, so not looking to upgrade anytime soon

 

[Hulk]

For the stuff i use, Haswell is 30% faster on the same clock than Ivy that i currently have. If Skylake improve by 10% over Hw, than it's nice upgrade for me. I'll definitely upgrade.

Which apps are giving you 30% improvement over Ivy?

 

[Dave2150]

We'll be lucky to see Skylake desktop chips this year, looking at how terrible the 14nm process seems thus far.

Remember we still haven't seen intel demonstrate a quad core 14nm chip at all yet - there are clearly issues with the process still.

 

[Ajay]

We'll be lucky to see Skylake desktop chips this year, looking at how terrible the 14nm process seems thus far.

Remember we still haven't seen intel demonstrate a quad core 14nm chip at all yet - there are clearly issues with the process still.

IIRC, 14nm MPU logic won't be shipping in high volume till sometime in 2Q15 (calendar). I'm really starting to wonder if Skylake needed a respin after Intel got done tweaking the 14nm process to reach high yields.

 

[Dave2150]

IIRC, 14nm MPU logic won't be shipping in high volume till sometime in 2Q15 (calendar). I'm really starting to wonder if Skylake needed a respin after Intel got done tweaking the 14nm process to reach high yields.

Yeh I agree something must have gone majorly wrong with 14nm production of the larger CPU dies.

We still haven't heard anything about Broadwell-K, which was planned to release a few months before Skylake.

I do wish we'd find out soon whether the rumours are true that Broadwell-K has been scrapped completely. I find it hard to believe still since z97 advertised 5th generation CPU support - Intel would get some negative PR from breaking that promise.

 

[Smoblikat]

If intels last 3 chips have been any indication of how this new CPU will perform, I will yet again pass. There is no reason to buy anything other than a sandy bridge right now, intel hasnt increased performance since that chip was released.

 

[frozentundra123456]

If you compare stock to stock, 2600k vs 4790k, there would be probably 30% difference. Haswell i3s are also quite a bit faster than SB. But yea, if you overclock SB is probably within 10% or so for i5 or i7.

 

[Kr@cker]

Which apps are giving you 30% improvement over Ivy?

LoL! That's what I'd like to know. Last I checked a Haswell with similar clock speeds was minimally faster than Ivy. LoL!

On topic: I will most likely upgrade to Skylake from my 3770K. I know that I still have a couple of years left in it so I'll keep her around and do a refresh for a home based server. I was really tossing around the idea of either the 4790K or the 5860 but just not sure yet. I'd really like to see where DDR4 is sitting price wise come 4th qtr.

 

[jpiniero]

If intels last 3 chips have been any indication of how this new CPU will perform, I will yet again pass. There is no reason to buy anything other than a sandy bridge right now, intel hasnt increased performance since that chip was released.

I honestly don't get why people 'need' to upgrade, especially if they are only really justifying their high performance PC as a very expensive and power hungry game console. This at a time when PC requirements have never been lower even as devs spend as little time optimizing it as possible.

 

[gsilver]

Most likely, yes.
I've got a 2500k and I semi-frequently hit CPU-limited applications.

Though the main reason will be the perks. Things like the the new m.2/sata express drives should give massive boosts in performance, as well as DDR 4.

 

[frozentundra123456]

LoL! That's what I'd like to know. Last I checked a Haswell with similar clock speeds was minimally faster than Ivy. LoL!

On topic: I will most likely upgrade to Skylake from my 3770K. I know that I still have a couple of years left in it so I'll keep her around and do a refresh for a home based server. I was really tossing around the idea of either the 4790K or the 5860 but just not sure yet. I'd really like to see where DDR4 is sitting price wise come 4th qtr.

Only thing I could think of would be a app that uses AVX2.

 

[2is]

I need to upgrade my whole rig. I would have done so already but the promise of Skylake this year has me holding off.

Things I'm looking forward to upgrade:

i7 920 to Skylake
6GB DDR3 to 16GB DDR4
HDD to SSD
Vista to Win10

I'd be holding off too if I had a 920, it still has life left in it especially when overclocked.

Which apps are giving you 30% improvement over Ivy?

I'd like to know this as well, but I suppose it's possible if those apps are taking advantage of AVX2... Still, I'm curious what it is he's running.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If I had a 920, I'd be looking at one of those X5650s to hold me over. The SSD and OS upgrades would be worth it though.

 

[cbn]

Depending on the price of ddr4, yes.

The price is dropping:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2422765

 

[PPB]

On Vray Haswell performs close to +20-25% than ivy. Doesnt even use AVX if you dont turn Embree on.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you compare stock to stock, 2600k vs 4790k, there would be probably 30% difference. Haswell i3s are also quite a bit faster than SB. But yea, if you overclock SB is probably within 10% or so for i5 or i7.

AT is an enthusiast forum where many overclock. i5 2500K/2600K hit 4.5-4.7Ghz. 4790K overclocks similarly. The problem is unless you are rendering, encoding/decoding video, etc. the extra IPC doesn't translate into improved gaming or office performance for example. If you actually use programs that benefit greatly from multi-threading, I would wager that a 4.3-4.4Ghz 5820K would be better than an overclocked 4-core Skylake-S.

In the past we wouldn't even be having a discussion if it was worth upgrading from a 4.5-year-old CPU. This in itself shows just how behind software is in relation to taking full advantage modern CPU architectures. Usually one is better off getting a new/larger SSD, 21:9 3440x1440/4K monitor and/or new GPU setup. Heck, maybe even getting awesome speakers like Energy Take Classic 5.1, Pioneer SP-PK52FS 5.1 system or AudioEngine 5+ (or say higher end headphones for those who prefer headphones over speakers) would provide a more emotional upgrade for a PC gamer today than upgrading from Sandy to Skylake. For me personally the excitement of upgrading to yet another quad-core in the CPU space is non-existent unless one is a competitive strategy or an FPS player where steady 120/144 fps is a huge benefit.

On paper a ~15% increase in IPC in Haswell over Sandy and let's assume another 15% for Skylake should mean a decent upgrade from an overclocked i5 2500K/2600K but games just don't show this direct relationship. I bet those gamers who jump to 4K will be 99% GPU limited and would be better off getting dual 390Xs/GM200s instead.

 

[SAAA]

AT is an enthusiast forum where many overclock. i5 2500K/2600K hit 4.5-4.7Ghz. 4790K overclocks similarly. The problem is unless you are rendering, encoding/decoding video, etc. the extra IPC doesn't translate into improved gaming or office performance for example. If you actually use programs that benefit greatly from multi-threading, I would wager that a 4.3-4.4Ghz 5820K would be better than an overclocked 4-core Skylake-S.

This time I may disagree because the difference in single but especially multithread performance with Haswell might be large enough to justify a faster quad core for most use cases.

Take your example and suppose the Skylake chip is running at close to 5GHz while the hex core at less than 4.5Ghz, that's already >10% better minimum. Single thread IPC looks like a 15% at most from this tock so there you have almost 30% better with this kind of loads.

But then in multi the story seems different because over these two increases there's something akin to SMT, MorphCore, that if true could push the difference to almost 50% more total!

That's a quad core running a full load at the same speed of a hex, while in any lower thread count Skylake could perform far better, up to 30% faster.

On paper a ~15% increase in IPC in Haswell over Sandy and let's assume another 15% for Skylake should mean a decent upgrade from an overclocked i5 2500K/2600K but games just don't show this direct relationship. I bet those gamers who jump to 4K will be 99% GPU limited and would be better off getting dual 390Xs/GM200s instead.

This sadly is true too so while pure computational loads might get all the love games are still so much limited by graphic cards... strategy games fans like me could still benefit though!

 

[MongGrel]

If I had a 920, I'd be looking at one of those X5650s to hold me over. The SSD and OS upgrades would be worth it though.

+1

 

[Gundark]

Which apps are giving you 30% improvement over Ivy?

Mostly emulators. Dolphin, pcsx2, rpcs3 and long awaited Xenia. They really love Haswell. I need to oc my 3570k to 4.3 - 4.5GHz range to match 4670k on stock.

 

[III-V]

AT is an enthusiast forum where many overclock. i5 2500K/2600K hit 4.5-4.7Ghz. 4790K overclocks similarly.

The 4790K overclocks quite a bit lower, on average (5117 MHz vs 4665 MHz). Take a look at average air numbers on HW Bot between Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell, both Devil's Canyon and the original. The downward trend is pretty clear, and Devil's Canyon doesn't quite make up for the losses, and in fact clocks slightly lower than Ivy Bridge did.

 

[III-V]

I was looking for information on Skylake for an article I'm writing, and found this roadmap (from April 2014) with Cannon Lake on it:

Image is from a presentation from an Intel partner.

Also interesting is the mention of Cannon Lake not being on the roadmap for desktop, the mention of Skylake Refresh (looks like Cannon Lake will be Broadwell all over again), and the omission of Broadwell-E (weird).

I should mention again that this roadmap is from last April, so things have certainly shifted since then, but Intel's initial plans were to have 10 nm in Q2 2016! Broadwell-U ended up launching a bit later than the roadmap shows, although I think there were some models floating around before the year's end... maybe we can expect a quarter delay, meaning Q3 2016 for Cannon Lake?

As far as I know, this is the only roadmap that exists with Cannon Lake on it (also curious -- Cannon Lake is two words, not one). Cue wccftech stealing this in 3... 2... 1...

 

[jdubs03]

That's an interesting find, what is surprising is that they had Skylake for only 2 quarters, seems quite a bit short to me. I would expect Skylake to be on the market for at least a year before Cannonlake would succeed it.

 

[III-V]

That's an interesting find, what is surprising is that they had Skylake for only 2 quarters, seems quite a bit short to me. I would expect Skylake to be on the market for at least a year before Cannonlake would succeed it.

I'm wondering if Intel's wide variety of devices on 14 nm may be the cause -- they'd be earning back their investment on 14 nm with quite some speed, given that they'll have SoFIA LTE 2, discrete modems, Broxton, Chery Trail, as well as designs Altera, Panasonic, and a few others.

Think I should make a new thread? (edit: I did)

 

[ShintaiDK]

That's an interesting find, what is surprising is that they had Skylake for only 2 quarters, seems quite a bit short to me. I would expect Skylake to be on the market for at least a year before Cannonlake would succeed it.

I am not surprised. Its just a move of the revenue. 2 years for the desktop on the same node, while the mobile jumps forward.

 

[Shmee]

I will wait till the next good E platform likely, such as Broadwell-E or Skylake-E