Broadwell to Skylake, will be similar to the transition from Prescott to Conroe

[MrTeal]

I am what you would consider an average joe and yes you are right in that i only upgrade my computer if it comes to a point where i no longer get satisfactory performance from my current setup.So i am going to keep my $500 Gaming PC from 2012 for as long as it can possibly continue to give acceptable performance in new games and then when it can't, i will do a full upgrade. I am looking at around 2016/17 for an upgrade time. Yes one can make a $500 PC last 5-6 years if they want to.

I'm running a 2500k/Z68x-UD3h-B3 combo that I bought around New Year's 2012. It started with a 6870 and quickly moved to an unlocked 6950. When I upgraded it last year almost entirely for gaming@1440p reasons, it was a no brainer to go with xfire R9 290s vs going with a single 290 and upgrade to 4670k. Cheaper and better performance in gaming.
We'll see what Skylake brings. I really want to upgrade the platform, but it's going to have to be extremely impressive to make me dump $500+ on CPU+16GB DDR4+MB. What might make me upgrade is if I do another GPU upgrade and PCIe2.0 x8 starts to become a real bottleneck, or I want to buy a PCIe SSD since I only have two x16 slots. I could definitely see the basic platform lasting me 5 years.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Then you're the antithesis of the average Joe...

 

[mohit9206]

Then you're the antithesis of the average Joe...

Exactly
I too would love to be that if i had the money..

 

[Dave2150]

Average joes game at 1080P maximum, most are still at 720P and I know a few who are still using 800x600 resolution.

Of course they can play the latest games at this resolution, though the graphical quality from such resolutions is extremely poor (for the majority at 720P or less).

 

[crashtech]

C'mon, 800x600 is so 90's...

 

[mohit9206]

Average joes game at 1080P maximum, most are still at 720P and I know a few who are still using 800x600 resolution.

Of course they can play the latest games at this resolution, though the graphical quality from such resolutions is extremely poor (for the majority at 720P or less).

For those people even the igpu in current intel CPU's would be an improvement. Better yet an AMD APU would be a massive improvement. I mean i had an integrated geforce 6150 which would struggle with games like San Andreas and Doom 3 even at 720p and couldn't even run any games requiring more than 128mb vram so when i upgraded to 5450,i could max those games out but then struggled with new games like Crysis 2,Max Payne 3, etc at 720p so i upgraded to 7750 which allowed me to play them at near max settings at 900p with good fps and hopefully will last me until Skylake/Cannonlake. So what I'm saying is a simple cheap gpu upgrade can make a huge difference without even upgrading anything else so why do people still play at 800*600 when they could simply pop in a $100 gpu and play at much higher resolutions and settings.

 

[escrow4]

I'll go ahead and say they would be perfectly ok for gaming even till 2020.
Look at a CPU released in 2005 let's say AMD 64x2 4800+. This particular CPU although a decade old can still play almost every game just fine with a gpu like hd 7770 at 1080p obviously with lowered settings.
So what's to say that an i5-2500k OCd will not be able to handle games of 2020 at medium settings with a mid range gpu of 2020? If at all it will fare much better than what the 4800+ can today.

It won't play any AAA game from 2012 onwards @ more than 10FPS. Imagine running Unity on it.

 

[Enigmoid]

Look at a CPU released in 2005 let's say AMD 64x2 4800+. This particular CPU although a decade old can still play almost every game just fine with a gpu like hd 7770 at 1080p obviously with lowered settings.
So what's to say that an i5-2500k OCd will not be able to handle games of 2020 at medium settings with a mid range gpu of 2020? If at all it will fare much better than what the 4800+ can today.

Well it will play... Just at 10 fps.

 

[MrTeal]

Well it will play... Just at 10 fps.

 

[cytg111]

2020, ~5 years of VR under the hood pushing 2x4Kx60fps.. I suppose its mostly on the GPU side of things, - I wouldnt be surprised if an oc'ed 2500k could drive that..

 

[frozentundra123456]

Average joes game at 1080P maximum, most are still at 720P and I know a few who are still using 800x600 resolution.

Of course they can play the latest games at this resolution, though the graphical quality from such resolutions is extremely poor (for the majority at 720P or less).

"Average Joes" drink beer, watch football, and play on the Xbox.

 

[2is]

I'll go ahead and say they would be perfectly ok for gaming even till 2020.
Look at a CPU released in 2005 let's say AMD 64x2 4800+. This particular CPU although a decade old can still play almost every game just fine with a gpu like hd 7770 at 1080p obviously with lowered settings.
So what's to say that an i5-2500k OCd will not be able to handle games of 2020 at medium settings with a mid range gpu of 2020? If at all it will fare much better than what the 4800+ can today.

Sorry, but no the X2 4800+ can't play almost every game today just fine, and hasn't been able to for at least the last 3-5 years... I know, I have one, it's in the attic. This isn't a matter of opinion, it just can't.

 

[RU482]

Broadwell for Desktop is cancelled. We've been talking about it for awhile.

Skylake leaks show it coming for back to school 2015.

who the hell is buying a desktop for "Back to school", lol

 

[cbn]

Look at a CPU released in 2005 let's say AMD 64x2 4800+. This particular CPU although a decade old can still play almost every game just fine with a gpu like hd 7770 at 1080p obviously with lowered settings. th a mid range gpu of 2020? If at all it will fare much better than what the 4800+ can today.

Athlon 64 x 2 4800+ is about 20% slower than a stock speed E6600 comparing passmark scores so I would expect a fairly large cpu bottleneck in many games.

 

[crashtech]

Sorry, but no the X2 4800+ can't play almost every game today just fine, and hasn't been able to for at least the last 3-5 years... I know, I have one, it's in the attic. This isn't a matter of opinion, it just can't.

Yeah, seriously, hyperbole has its limits.

 

[RussianSensation]

Found this review. Doesn't have the 486 but it's pretty f cool.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/benchmark-marathon,review-640.html

I upgraded from Pentium 233 MMX to Athlon XP1600+ @ 1800+ speeds. :biggrin: That was epic. Also loved the upgrade from Pentium 4 2.6Ghz "C" @ 3.2Ghz to Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 3.4Ghz and 1 year later I was already on a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz. Those were the days. For me to feel anything even remotely close to these upgrades I would probably need to wait until 6-core Skylake-E or even 8-core Icelake. Even then I don't think it's going to be the same because today most of the bottlenecks are in I/O (PCIe SSD) and in the GPU, unless you are rendering/video encoding or running highly multi-threaded apps. Otoh, I really like that modern CPUs from Intel last 4-5 years today which means there is more $ left over for other hobbies or GPU/SSD/monitor upgrades. My next CPU upgrade will probably last me 5+ years as well, although I've been very tempted to grab a 5820K to play with.

Hopefully Skylake brings another 10-15% increase in IPC + increased OCing headroom. If it overclocks to 5.0Ghz, that would be almost a 41-46% increase in performance over a 4.5Ghz SB!

 

[crashtech]

Somehow I don't see Skylake making to 5.0GHz on readily available cooling solutions. Hopefully it will, they are getting rid of FIVR after all, which takes some heat off the die.

 

[witeken]

Somehow I don't see Skylake making to 5.0GHz on readily available cooling solutions. Hopefully it will, they are getting rid of FIVR after all, which takes some heat off the die.

Maybe at 10 nanos?

 

[2is]

"Average Joes" drink beer, watch football, and play on the Xbox.

I think the intent here is "the average [pc gamer]"

 

[mohit9206]

Sorry, but no the X2 4800+ can't play almost every game today just fine, and hasn't been able to for at least the last 3-5 years... I know, I have one, it's in the attic. This isn't a matter of opinion, it just can't.

But i had a X2 4600+ and it could play games like Crysis 2,Max Payne 3,etc just fine with a Radeon 7750 graphics card.

Athlon 64 x 2 4800+ is about 20% slower than a stock speed E6600 comparing passmark scores so I would expect a fairly large cpu bottleneck in many games.

Yes cpu bottleneck is there but games are still playable that is the point.

Yeah, seriously, hyperbole has its limits.

So you don't think an i5-2500k will be playing new games till 2020? Considering its been almost 4 years since it's launch and still no single gpu card can bottleneck it.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Maybe at 10 nanos?

You believe that it'll reach higher clocks at 10nm when it has been going downhill since 22nm?

Even the future technologies were promising power reduction rather than performance increase: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/...rim_Consumption_of_Microprocessors_by_90.html

This is why I am saying they are better off with reducing from current clocks of ~4GHz to 2.5-3GHz but improve perf/clock to compensate for it. Like the Apple A-series SoCs. That would probably make them much more competitive perf/watt wise compared to mobile SoCs as well.

Future also seems to be about graphics and perf/watt which is an excellent match for future processes but not so much for 4+ GHz CPUs.

 

[cbn]

But i had a X2 4600+ and it could play games like Crysis 2,Max Payne 3,etc just fine with a Radeon 7750 graphics card.

Those games only require a Core 2 duo. In fact, I played Crysis 2 on a E6600.

 

[SAAA]

I think people expecting large performance gains will be quite disappointed, but the part about similar transition from Prescott to Conroe can still hold in a certain way: if power consumption really does get cut of 60% like some rumors said and MorphCore is a thing (in order vs out of order = less power consumption, hopefully at same performance) then the processor may run much cooler than Broadwells/Haswells do now.
That's a big step in helping overclockers too because right now they are hitting a wall that's mostly heat related: drop T of 2-30 degrees on and I assure you many more people will run higher voltages and higher clocks even on air with 14nm.

So yes like Prescott to Conroe because it's the same process yet it works much better.
If you look at IPC back then it was almost a 100% jump but the slides displayed just 40% more performance at 40% less power. Now we may se a 10-20% more at 60% less power, aka the same? (yeah not quite but you get the idea)

 

[Dave2150]

But i had a X2 4600+ and it could play games like Crysis 2,Max Payne 3,etc just fine with a Radeon 7750 graphics card.

Yes cpu bottleneck is there but games are still playable that is the point.

So you don't think an i5-2500k will be playing new games till 2020? Considering its been almost 4 years since it's launch and still no single gpu card can bottleneck it.

Do you have any idea how old those games are?

I think you need a reality check, it's 2015 and there are many new games released this year and last year that have no hopes in hell of running on your CPU.

2500K is a bottleneck for many GPU's already, when running in Crossfire/SLI.

Even a single TitanX is bottlenecked by the 2500k, unless you're one of the 1% who clock it to 5Ghz+

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think people expecting large performance gains will be quite disappointed, but the part about similar transition from Prescott to Conroe can still hold in a certain way: if power consumption really does get cut of 60% like some rumors said and MorphCore is a thing (in order vs out of order = less power consumption, hopefully at same performance) then the processor may run much cooler than Broadwells/Haswells do now.
That's a big step in helping overclockers too because right now they are hitting a wall that's mostly heat related: drop T of 2-30 degrees on and I assure you many more people will run higher voltages and higher clocks even on air with 14nm.

So yes like Prescott to Conroe because it's the same process yet it works much better.
If you look at IPC back then it was almost a 100% jump but the slides displayed just 40% more performance at 40% less power. Now we may se a 10-20% more at 60% less power, aka the same? (yeah not quite but you get the idea)

I dont really see the lower power consumption, since desktop Skylake quad core has a 95 watt TDP, even higher than Haswell.