Are you waiting for Kaby Lake?

[Shivansps]

Well, has if i have a choice, at this point my Z68 1155 board may die before Coffe Lake arrive, also the I/O limitations are starting to be a problem at this point, im not complaining about the 2500K, its the motherboard that is getting older.

So, it depends mostly on Coffe Lake compatibility, if 1151 and Series 200 compatibility is confirmed, i may get a good Z270 board + Pentium G4620 at some point next year to wait for Coffe Lake.

 

[CriticalOne]

Nope.

I wont be looking at Skylake, Kaby Lake, or even Zen.

I already have a LGA 1150 H97 motherboard. I can still buy a very, very capable i7 or Xeon E3 without having to buy DDR4 RAM and a new motherboard.

Marginal returns after the 8th hardware thread are really, really small in games. In most cases, the mainstream i7 is still faster than the 6950x due to the higher per core performance. This is why even though Zen will be a great value, I wont be getting it. It will be hard for me to justify getting more than 4 cores and/or more than 8 hardware threads regardless of price.

 

[gammaray]

i own a 4770k, until i see a 25% performance increase in videogames, i am not going to upgrade ever.

 

[mikk]

Btw, is the iGPU any different than SKL, besides the media-decoding?

Not only decoding, encoding as well.

 

[RussianSensation]

Will probably going to skip 7700K. The extra 6-8% performance from a 5-5.1Ghz will hardly show up in games over the 4.7-4.8Ghz i7 6700K.

Coffee Lake is not exciting whatsoever as the u deleting CPU and GPU architecture will be from Kaby Lake. Cannonlake should be to Skylake/Kaby Lake what Ivy Bridge was to Sandy Bridge -- so another minor upgrade worth skipping.

For a long time I've had my upgrade path on Ice Lake at minimum as it should be a newer architecture much like Sandy, Haswell and Skylake. Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Cannonlake are all refreshes of Skylake.

I would want PCIe 4.0, DMI 4.0, PCIe 4.0 M.2 or PCIe 3.0 x8 SSD interface.

As far as 6-8 cores for gaming goes, I think we won't see any major move towards that until next generation of consoles in 2019-2020. Right now there are very few games outside of Battlefield 1 multi-player and Total War Warhammer where there is Ann actual benefit to 6 core HT over i7 6700K.

The i3 7350K is a waste of $. Asrock Z170 boards allow $180 i5 6400 to overclock to 4.5-4.6Ghz via BCLK. That makes the i3 priced at $150+ one of the worst CPUs for enthusiasts who know what they are doing with overclocking.

For anyone with an i5 2500K and lower, ya that CPU is gimping modern cards severely. Benchmarks are everywhere online that have proved this many times. It bottlenecks even a GTX970/R9 390, but I still see people pairing it with a GTX1070/1080. Compared to the i7 6700K, i5 2500K can trail by as much as 40-100%.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The i3 7350K is a waste of $. Asrock Z170 boards allow $180 i5 6400 to overclock to 4.5-4.6Ghz via BCLK. That makes the i3 priced at $150+ one of the worst CPUs for enthusiasts who know what they are doing with overclocking.

I agree. I just ordered an i5-6400 off of ebay from mp3superstore (Ewiz / Superbiiz), for ~$180. I'm crossing my fingers that you're right, and that the i5-6400 CPUs in particular aren't a crappy bin. Granted, supposedly, the 14nm process has matured, so it seems like, in theory, there should be less bad bins out there, and more good overclockers. Here's hoping!

Edit: PS. Is that CPU overkill, for an MSI GTX950 2GB OC, or a Sapphire Nitro 4GB RX460? That's what I've got to work with as far as new cards that I have in-stock. Actually, have a couple of 2GB R9 270X cards too, if those are faster.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Will probably going to skip 7700K. The extra 6-8% performance from a 5-5.1Ghz will hardly show up in games over the 4.7-4.8Ghz i7 6700K.

Coffee Lake is not exciting whatsoever as the u deleting CPU and GPU architecture will be from Kaby Lake. Cannonlake should be to Skylake/Kaby Lake what Ivy Bridge was to Sandy Bridge -- so another minor upgrade worth skipping.

For a long time I've had my upgrade path on Ice Lake at minimum as it should be a newer architecture much like Sandy, Haswell and Skylake. Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Cannonlake are all refreshes of Skylake.

I would want PCIe 4.0, DMI 4.0, PCIe 4.0 M.2 or PCIe 3.0 x8 SSD interface.

As far as 6-8 cores for gaming goes, I think we won't see any major move towards that until next generation of consoles in 2019-2020. Right now there are very few games outside of Battlefield 1 multi-player and Total War Warhammer where there is Ann actual benefit to 6 core HT over i7 6700K.

The i3 7350K is a waste of $. Asrock Z170 boards allow $180 i5 6400 to overclock to 4.5-4.6Ghz via BCLK. That makes the i3 priced at $150+ one of the worst CPUs for enthusiasts who know what they are doing with overclocking.

For anyone with an i5 2500K and lower, ya that CPU is gimping modern cards severely. Benchmarks are everywhere online that have proved this many times. It bottlenecks even a GTX970/R9 390, but I still see people pairing it with a GTX1070/1080. Compared to the i7 6700K, i5 2500K can trail by as much as 40-100%.

Fortunately after Coffee Lake will come Ice Lake. Hopefully this will give us a big improvement in performance per clock while keeping frequency roughly the same.

Also, agree on wanting those new platform features like PCIe 4.0.

 

[RussianSensation]

My gaming PC still has an i5-2500 (non K) at stock and it's still fine for all of the games that I play on it.

May very well be true if you don't care for sub-60 fps drops, have a G-Sync monitor, don't care to get 80-100% of the GPU's performance despite buying an expensive videocard (then the question is why buy a GTX980Ti over a GTX970/980/R9 390, etc.), or don't play many CPU-demanding multi-player games (online strategy, MMOs and FPS). If you are happy with the performance, that's all that matters but objectively, i5 2500K or non-K will bottleneck modern GPUs in nearly every AAA game. This is because a stock i5-6400 is already too slow.

i5-6400 vs. i5-6400@4.5 w/ GTX 1060 6Gb @ 2Ghz
> The CPU bottleneck in BF1 is tremendous with a stock i5 and a mere GTX1060.

i5-6400 vs. i5-6400 @ 4.5Ghz
0:21 min = 48-51 fps vs. 78-81 fps
0:32 min = 49 fps vs. 77 fps
0:51-0:53 min = 46-48 fps vs. 68-69 fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdV7zhDfA4Y

i5-6400 (3.1) vs i5-6400@4,5 in all new games 2016 (GTX 1060 @ 2Ghz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOl21O_8_RI

Buying any GPU above GTX980/R9 390X level and pairing it with a stock i5 2500-6400 era is akin to flushing $ right down the toilet.

I know that on this forum people will continue to deny deny deny CPU bottlenecks and yet professional YouTubers have proved them wrong for the last 5 years in a row. Not trying to pick on you in particular but the performance difference between an i5 2500K/i5 3570K and i7 6700K in modern games is very larger at times in terms of minimum FPS and consistent averages on a GTX1070/980Ti level GPU.

Every single person living in denial with these GPUs gaming on those outdated i5s is never going to see the full GPU performance that any professional review shows. That's why a lot of the time the GPU sub-forum arguments are sometimes a waste of time as we are comparing benchmarks on cutting edge i7-6700K 4.5-4.7Ghz rigs and write 20-30 pages on how one GPU is 5-10% faster than the other but most PC gamers are using CPUs far slower than even an i7 3770K.

I agree. I just ordered an i5-6400 off of ebay from mp3superstore (Ewiz / Superbiiz), for ~$180.

You don't have a MicroCenter near you? They have i5-6600K for that price and i7-6700K for a stellar $260.

I'm crossing my fingers that you're right, and that the i5-6400 CPUs in particular aren't a crappy bin. Granted, supposedly, the 14nm process has matured, so it seems like, in theory, there should be less bad bins out there, and more good overclockers. Here's hoping!

From most overclocking I've seen, i5-6400-6500-6600 non-K all overclock the same, topping out at 4.4-4.6Ghz with max voltage of 1.47-1.48V. i5-6600K/6700K can overclock better to 4.6-4.8Ghz.

What motherboard are you going to be using, hopefully an Asrock because for all other brands you'll have to install a custom BIOS for BCLK overclocking.

Edit: PS. Is that CPU overkill, for an MSI GTX950 2GB OC, or a Sapphire Nitro 4GB RX460? That's what I've got to work with as far as new cards that I have in-stock. Actually, have a couple of 2GB R9 270X cards too, if those are faster.

I presume you intend to keep the CPU for games for 2-3 years at least. Then it's not overkill as you'll probably upgrade from those cards. I would have personally sold all of those budget low-end cards and purchased at least an RX470/480/GTX1060 6GB. I don't understand the point of having so many low-end GPUs that perform so similarly to each other. Why do you have 2x R9 270Xs and then also a 950 and an RX 460? Sell them all honestly. RX 480 8GB is $215 with Civ 6 and there are good deals on GTX 1060 6GB cards as well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

RS, thanks for the info. If I may ask one thing, for 1080P gaming on AAA titles in 2016, i5-6400@4.5 and RX460 4GB, good match-up, or do I need more GPU for 1080P High? (Not worried about Ultra settings.)

Edit: Is a 7950 (800/1250) faster or slower than a Nitro RX460 4GB card? What about a GTX950 OC?

 

[whm1974]

RS, thanks for the info. If I may ask one thing, for 1080P gaming on AAA titles in 2016, i5-6400@4.5 and RX460 4GB, good match-up, or do I need more GPU for 1080P High? (Not worried about Ultra settings.)

Edit: Is a 7950 (800/1250) faster or slower than a Nitro RX460 4GB card? What about a GTX950 OC?

I would get a 1050 Ti instead.

 

[RussianSensation]

Fortunately after Coffee Lake will come Ice Lake. Hopefully this will give us a big improvement in performance per clock while keeping frequency roughly the same.

Also, agree on wanting those new platform features like PCIe 4.0.

The bad part is that Coffee Lake is slated for Q1 2018 which means Ice Lake may slip to 2019.
http://wccftech.com/intel-coffee-lake-2018-cpu-details/

If Ice Lake manages to overclock to 5.3Ghz and has 10% IPC over 6700K, that would make it potentially 24% or so faster over the 4.7Ghz 6700K. Not bad, but that may still not be enough to get Skylake users to upgrade. I am curious to see when Sandy/Ivy users will finally start to upgrade in mass because until Ice Lake, it's going to be "more of the same." If someone with an i7 2600K/3770K hasn't upgraded to 6700K yet, there is very little in the pipeline until Ice Lake that would change their mind I would think. It potentially means some i7 2600K/3770K users will be using their CPUs for 7-8 years.

RS, thanks for the info. If I may ask one thing, for 1080P gaming on AAA titles in 2016, i5-6400@4.5 and RX460 4GB, good match-up, or do I need more GPU for 1080P High? (Not worried about Ultra settings.)

Edit: Is a 7950 (800/1250) faster or slower than a Nitro RX460 4GB card? What about a GTX950 OC?

I don't lake any of the newer cards you bought. An overclocked 7950 to 1.15-1.2Ghz ~ R9 280X will beat all of them. I'd sell all of your cards like the 7950/R9 270Xs, 950/RX460 and buy a GTX1060 6GB/RX 480 8GB.

There have been plenty of deals on Jet.com, Newegg, etc. for RX 480 8GB or GTX1060 6GB for $205-225.

I would get a 1050 Ti instead.

That's a terribly priced card and makes no sense whatsoever right now.

GTX1050Ti = $130
RX 470 4GB = $160

RX 470 is 25-35% faster than GTX1050Ti, sometimes 40-50% faster. Don't want to turn this CPU thread/discussion into a GPU one. So i'll just leave it here: RX 470 slaughters the GTX1050Ti in modern games. GTX1050Ti is also barely an "upgrade" from an overclocked HD7950 he has. Worst of all, GTX1050Ti cannot achieve 60 fps averages in the vast majority of modern 2015-2016 AAA PC games, which means even though the GTX1050Ti costs only $130, it's already outdated compared to the $160 RX 470.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would get a 1050 Ti instead.

Why would I do that, when I can get an RX470 4GB card for a tiny bit more money, and according to RS's graph, there, it's quite a bit faster.

I assign no value to not requiring a supplemental PCI-E power connector.

Edit: If I were to get an RX 480 4GB card, or a GTX 1060 3GB card, which would be better?

 

[VirtualLarry]

From most overclocking I've seen, i5-6400-6500-6600 non-K all overclock the same, topping out at 4.4-4.6Ghz with max voltage of 1.47-1.48V. i5-6600K/6700K can overclock better to 4.6-4.8Ghz.

1.47-1.48V? That's... INSANE. No way am I willing to push that much voltage through a 14nm CPU. No freaking way.

I stick to MAX 1.30V or maybe 1.35V.

Edit: Anything 1.380V or above, for CPU Vcore, shows RED on my Z170 Pro4S.

Edit: See here. Someone got 4.7Ghz @ 1.408V. No need for 1.47V.
http://overclocking.guide/skylake-overclocking-power-consumption-and-voltage-scaling/

I presume you intend to keep the CPU for games for 2-3 years at least. Then it's not overkill as you'll probably upgrade from those cards. I would have personally sold all of those budget low-end cards and purchased at least an RX470/480/GTX1060 6GB. I don't understand the point of having so many low-end GPUs that perform so similarly to each other. Why do you have 2x R9 270Xs and then also a 950 and an RX 460? Sell them all honestly.

*shrug*. I bought them for builds for people, at different times, all of them (at the time I bought them) were a "good deal" (like $40-50 off).

 

[escrow4]

I was thinking of scrapping this stock 5930K for a stock i7 7700K although it does seem like a waste. Box would be smaller and quieter though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, interesting. I was wrong. My Z170 Pro4S ATX mobo, only shows RED for the vcore, when entering 1.400V or above. 1.395 doesn't show red.

Also, @ 1.400V, I was able to boost my BCLK from 135.0 to 140.0, which gives me 4.62Ghz on this G4400. Not too shabby.

Temps are north of 86-87C, and it's probably 65F in the room.

Edit: Hmm, temp graph just blipped 90.5C.

Edit: Nope, couldn't push it to 143.0 BCLK (4.7+ Ghz). Doing more extensive testing at 140.0 BCLK (4.62Ghz).

Hope I'm not smelling something... hmm. ?

I OCed the RAM from 2400+ to 2600+. It was at 2520 @ 135.0 BCLK.

Edit: Hmm, BSOD, "CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT".

Now at 139.4 BCLK (4.6Ghz even), 1.380V, DDR4-2410 or something like that.

Edit: Hmm, hard freeze, when I clicked "Off" in OCCT.

Now at 4.5Ghz even, 1.300V, DDR4-2400-ish.

 

[Arachnotronic]

May very well be true if you don't care for sub-60 fps drops, have a G-Sync monitor, don't care to get 80-100% of the GPU's performance despite buying an expensive videocard (then the question is why buy a GTX980Ti over a GTX970/980/R9 390, etc.), or don't play many CPU-demanding multi-player games (online strategy, MMOs and FPS). If you are happy with the performance, that's all that matters but objectively, i5 2500K or non-K will bottleneck modern GPUs in nearly every AAA game. This is because a stock i5-6400 is already too slow.

i5-6400 vs. i5-6400@4.5 w/ GTX 1060 6Gb @ 2Ghz
> The CPU bottleneck in BF1 is tremendous with a stock i5 and a mere GTX1060.

i5-6400 vs. i5-6400 @ 4.5Ghz
0:21 min = 48-51 fps vs. 78-81 fps
0:32 min = 49 fps vs. 77 fps
0:51-0:53 min = 46-48 fps vs. 68-69 fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdV7zhDfA4Y

i5-6400 (3.1) vs i5-6400@4,5 in all new games 2016 (GTX 1060 @ 2Ghz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOl21O_8_RI

Buying any GPU above GTX980/R9 390X level and pairing it with a stock i5 2500-6400 era is akin to flushing $ right down the toilet.

I know that on this forum people will continue to deny deny deny CPU bottlenecks and yet professional YouTubers have proved them wrong for the last 5 years in a row. Not trying to pick on you in particular but the performance difference between an i5 2500K/i5 3570K and i7 6700K in modern games is very larger at times in terms of minimum FPS and consistent averages on a GTX1070/980Ti level GPU.

Every single person living in denial with these GPUs gaming on those outdated i5s is never going to see the full GPU performance that any professional review shows. That's why a lot of the time the GPU sub-forum arguments are sometimes a waste of time as we are comparing benchmarks on cutting edge i7-6700K 4.5-4.7Ghz rigs and write 20-30 pages on how one GPU is 5-10% faster than the other but most PC gamers are using CPUs far slower than even an i7 3770K.



You don't have a MicroCenter near you? They have i5-6600K for that price and i7-6700K for a stellar $260.



From most overclocking I've seen, i5-6400-6500-6600 non-K all overclock the same, topping out at 4.4-4.6Ghz with max voltage of 1.47-1.48V. i5-6600K/6700K can overclock better to 4.6-4.8Ghz.

What motherboard are you going to be using, hopefully an Asrock because for all other brands you'll have to install a custom BIOS for BCLK overclocking.



I presume you intend to keep the CPU for games for 2-3 years at least. Then it's not overkill as you'll probably upgrade from those cards. I would have personally sold all of those budget low-end cards and purchased at least an RX470/480/GTX1060 6GB. I don't understand the point of having so many low-end GPUs that perform so similarly to each other. Why do you have 2x R9 270Xs and then also a 950 and an RX 460? Sell them all honestly. RX 480 8GB is $215 with Civ 6 and there are good deals on GTX 1060 6GB cards as well.

RussianSensation, I would be stunned if Intel were to pull Ice Lake into 2018. Intel seems to be going for yearly refreshes, so we'll see Ice in Q1 2019. This really sucks but I think that's the best we can hope for given Intel's current release cadence.

 

[whm1974]

Why would I do that, when I can get
I assign no value to not requiring a supplemental PCI-E power connector.

So if someone with an OEM box with no GPU power connectors ask you which which video card to get what would you tell him?

 

[VirtualLarry]

So if someone with an OEM box with no GPU power connectors ask you which which video card to get what would you tell him?

I meant for this particular build I'm doing. It has an EVGA 600W PSU, with dual PCI-E power connectors. So having a video card without needing PCI-E power doesn't matter.

 

[IntelUser2000]

For a long time I've had my upgrade path on Ice Lake at minimum as it should be a newer architecture much like Sandy, Haswell and Skylake. Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Cannonlake are all refreshes of Skylake.

Sigh. The last "big" advancement was a major disappointment. It's called Skylake. Barely 10% faster. Really more like 5-10%. We used to get that with a "mere shrink". That's what Icelake will be. Probably 5-7% down from 5-10%. Even less.

I would want PCIe 4.0, DMI 4.0, PCIe 4.0 M.2 or PCIe 3.0 x8 SSD interface.

Why aim so low for storage? The real advancement for storage is NVDIMMs based on Optane. It'll take a decade to fully get there, assuming everything works out which I doubt. The others are like the differences between 5400RPM and 10K RPM. Nice, but quite marginal. Besides, the difference back in those days were magnified since it was so low in the performance ladder anyway. Though I am not sure if it'll come that fast considering how much longer its taking in general. Full OS, application, hardware optimization might take 25 years.

My goals, if it works as they claim: Kabylake with Optane Memory(Optane Memory specifically refers to the caching setup), and see if it works good enough to get really cheap storage with decent SSD like performance. They tried caching for YEARS, even decades. I'd like to see someone have success with it. I'm hoping Optane Memory will finally do this. Using an SSD cache + HDD to make it as fast as an SSD never made sense. However, Optane cache is faster than an SSD, so Optane cache + HDD might make it fast as SSD. Plus the SSD cache itself needed a cache while Optane much reduces/negates the need for one.

If that's what Kabylake achieves, then Core i3 + Optane Memory would be my new setup.

If it doesn't, something coming in the year 2025 may entice me with fast enough CPU. Probably not.

 

[RichUK]

Hmm, interesting. I was wrong. My Z170 Pro4S ATX mobo, only shows RED for the vcore, when entering 1.400V or above. 1.395 doesn't show red.

Also, @ 1.400V, I was able to boost my BCLK from 135.0 to 140.0, which gives me 4.62Ghz on this G4400. Not too shabby.

Temps are north of 86-87C, and it's probably 65F in the room.

Edit: Hmm, temp graph just blipped 90.5C.

Edit: Nope, couldn't push it to 143.0 BCLK (4.7+ Ghz). Doing more extensive testing at 140.0 BCLK (4.62Ghz).

Hope I'm not smelling something... hmm. ?

I OCed the RAM from 2400+ to 2600+. It was at 2520 @ 135.0 BCLK.

Edit: Hmm, BSOD, "CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT".

Now at 139.4 BCLK (4.6Ghz even), 1.380V, DDR4-2410 or something like that.

Edit: Hmm, hard freeze, when I clicked "Off" in OCCT.

Now at 4.5Ghz even, 1.300V, DDR4-2400-ish.

I hit a hard ceiling at 4.5ghz and memory at ~2600mhz when using BCLK on my I3 6100. It's either the board or on die memory controllers holding me back as RAM is under its rated xmp - no amount of voltage allowed me to go further.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I hit a hard ceiling at 4.5ghz and memory at ~2600mhz when using BCLK on my I3 6100. It's either the board or on die memory controllers holding me back as RAM is under its rated xmp - no amount of voltage allowed me to go further.

I have a feeling that this limit we're both hitting, has to do with uncore. With a "K" CPU, you can lower the uncore multi to something like 41x, while you adjust the core clock multi above 45x.

With BCLK OC, there's no such luxury, and it seems like both core and uncore multis are fixed at max.

Which means that the cache is likely to be the limit.

 

[dbrons]

I am curious to see when Sandy/Ivy users will finally start to upgrade in mass because until Ice Lake, it's going to be "more of the same." If someone with an i7 2600K/3770K hasn't upgraded to 6700K yet, there is very little in the pipeline until Ice Lake that would change their mind I would think.

I'm one with a 2600k and I am in the planning stages for an upgrade to KL. I use my computer mostly to compile my large collection of video and music. I don't game and use the onboard graphics.

I am less interested in the performance upgrade of the cpu as I am in the new interfaces on a 200 series chipset. Would love to use the M2 slot probably a 512 gb Samsung 960 pro. Am going to be getting a UHD monitor and am thinking of keeping my current rig with its 7 hard drives as a media server connected with USB 3.1.

I am not really concerned about the coming of the 10mm cpus as has been pointed out the last drop via Skylake was underwhelming. Seems the optimization phase might be the time you see the most focus on performance.

 

[pooptastic]

I'm holding out for Coffee Lake. Their upper ranges should be hex cores. Hoping by then there's a big jump in performance from a 3930k.

 

[sirmo]

Currently on 4770k.. will be going back to AMD once Zen is out.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Currently on 4770k.. will be going back to AMD once Zen is out.

Are you going to upgrade to Zen even if it turns out to not be an upgrade?