Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

[Pandamonia]

Nice setup, must be exciting to see it all there in the flesh, I bet you're memorized the motherboard manual by now

3000Mhz does indeed seem to be the sweet spot, in terms of price/performance. I'm very satisfied with my Corsair LPX 3000Mhz C15 kit, literally the first memory kit I've just enabled XMP for and forgotten about it.

I'd have been happy if the memory had arrived. I've paid a premium because I don't like waiting and now I am having to wait till tomorrow to start the build!

The g skill are better timings than the corsair I originally ordered so I guess it's not all bad. Let's hope I win the silicone lottery!

 

[.vodka]

Just thinking out loud, but I would consider ditching my i5 for an "unlocked" Skylake i3, even if it was just through bclock. The reduced heat and noise appeal to me. Any news on bclock overclocking?

No news on bclk overclocking until intel releases non-k parts. I suppose a Z chipset is required for this kind of overclocking.

Here's hoping they won't lock bclk down if a non-k part is installed in a Z board.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Just went through the Intel IDF keynote live blog on Anandtech. Lots of focus on products, applications, "cool stuff" and fluff. Not so much technical details. But maybe that's normal for the IDF keynote, and we'll get the deep dives from the separate presentations later?

 

[Deders]

When you do put it together let us know if you have any problems with the memory(XMP)

I had no problems whatsoever with my Gskill 3200 XMP profiles.

If you want to re-install windows 7 on this board you will need an 8GB+ USB drive. There is a program on the disk that helps you create a USB install with USB3 drivers so you can use the keyboard and mouse during setup.

 

[phillyman36]

I had no problems whatsoever with my Gskill 3200 XMP profiles.

If you want to re-install windows 7 on this board you will need an 8GB+ USB drive. There is a program on the disk that helps you create a USB install with USB3 drivers so you can use the keyboard and mouse during setup.

What bios version are you running? There are some people saying that some of then higher ram when you set the xmp it wont work. It defaults to 2133(have to turn off xmp.)

 

[mikk]

CPU details: https://hubb.blob.core.windows.net/.../lvktSvtUAVTg=&se=2015-08-19T17:35:08Z&sp=rwd

GPU details: https://hubb.blob.core.windows.net/...AN3rsvP4v+JmU=&se=2015-08-19T17:25:06Z&sp=rwd

 

[Pandamonia]

I had no problems whatsoever with my Gskill 3200 XMP profiles.

If you want to re-install windows 7 on this board you will need an 8GB+ USB drive. There is a program on the disk that helps you create a USB install with USB3 drivers so you can use the keyboard and mouse during setup.

i have made a bootable win 7 USB..

What else do i need to do?

 

[witeken]

Now skimming through the CPU arch. Those PDFs are fast online. IRRC, previous year was slower, on the order of days I think.

Edit: After the first slide, it's already clear that Skylake is developed for mobile, just like Broadwell. It's Haswell 2.0.

Edit: Lot of focus on memory. Guess the XPoint announcement was no coincidence.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Now skimming through the CPU arch. Those PDFs are fast online. IRRC, previous year was slower, on the order of days I think.

Edit: After the first slide, it's already clear that Skylake is developed for mobile, just like Broadwell. It's Haswell 2.0.

They say in one of the slides that there is a server-oriented Skylake.

 

[witeken]

They say in one of the slides that there is a server-oriented Skylake.

Yeah, with the lack of AVX3.2, no surprise.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yeah, with the lack of AVX3.2, no surprise.

I'm glad that Intel is doing two different CPUs for each segment. This is the right way to do things, IMO.

 

[witeken]

With all this focus on energy consumption, I'll tell you, it's not gonna be long before this goes into a phone. The question is which, and then I mean which iPhone.

I bet all my money on Cannonlake.

 

[mikk]

I bet not before there is a full SoC variant - Icelake or later. Maybe in 5 years.

 

[Enigmoid]

Interesting to see a camera ISP on die.

 

[Sweepr]

Skylake Core
Bigger/wider core, better instruction per clock, improved power efficiency

Better performance/Watt for the core, including focus on power at low utilization

20x TDP scale
4x form factor range
Both PC and tablet I/O set
40%-60% less SoC power on video, multimedia, win idle

Segment optimization
• Dedicated server and client IP configurations

eDRAM as Memory Side Cache
• Observed by all memory accesses, i.e. fully coherent
• Not architectural; can cache any data including “uncacheable memory” types

Same process as Broadwell requires microarchitecture and design innovation to further reduce active and average power
• Reductions in every part of interconnects, inside IPs, I/O, PLLs etc.
• Drastic power reduction vs. previous generation SoC power in video playback, multimedia, and win-idle

I wonder what's the difference between client and server Skylake cores, other than AVX3.2 support. Can't wait for Skylake-E.

 

[Sweepr]

Gen 9 Graphics

Lossless Render Target Compression
• Compress data before sending to memory
• Saves bandwidth and DDR power
• Cache line granularity
• Peak compression ratio: 2:1
• Performance improvement: 3-11%
• Supported all SKUs starting Gen9

Compute Capability Enhancements:
• Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) improvements over Broadwell
- Improved cache coherency performance
• Larger L3 cache per slice
• Additional atomic operations
- 32-bit float, min, max, compare and exchange
• Support for smaller thread groups
- Barriers, shared local memory (SLM)
• Improvements in preemption granularity

Low power enhancements
- Standalone Fixed-Function media in Unslice
- Reduced memory bandwidth
• New Intel® Quick-Sync Video mode
- Fixed function encoder designed for low power
and low latency real-time applications
• New codec decode and encode support
- Support for HEVC, VP8, MJPEG
• New RAW imaging capabilities
• Broad enabling of applications
- Support for DirectX* 12 and OpenCL™ 2.0, extends CPU/GPU programmability

Summary and Next Steps
• Another large step function in scalability and performance
- Gen9 GT4 1.5x larger than Gen8 GT3
• Many 3D/Compute performance and visual features
- Throughput increases, DirectX* 12 features, compression, preemption, etc.
• New low power media support
- Fixed-Function decoders and encoder
• Media quality improvements and 4K camera RAW support
• Multiple high-resolution display pipes
- Additional planes per pipe

 

[witeken]

No word on FIVR or its replacement, BTW...

 

[witeken]

There's also a PDF online about power features like the Speed Shift and CPU DCC.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Hey wait, I thought Intel was just resting on its laurels not making any architectural improvements according to the haters?

 

[witeken]

Hey wait, I thought Intel was just resting on its laurels not making any architectural improvements according to the haters?

Much of these things seen more like platform enhancements and optimizations to improve power and energy, although there's of course all the usual iterative things. I do wonder how many execution ports there are now. They increased with Haswell and now again it seems.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Much of these things seen more like platform enhancements and optimizations to improve power and energy, although there's of course all the usual iterative things. I do wonder how many execution ports there are now. They increased with Haswell and now again it seems.

Sure, but a lot of these little enhancements/optimizations add up to something pretty good.

Intel's "big core" teams do a great job and they've delivered something solid with Skylake.

 

[witeken]

You're right, the architecture has been improved across the board from front-end to execution units.

 

[Head1985]

 

[CakeMonster]

Anyone know what "Wider retirement" means under "Improved Hyper-Threading"?

 

[witeken]

Anyone know what "Wider retirement" means under "Improved Hyper-Threading"?

I think more execution ports. Not sure.