Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

[frozentundra123456]

No offense, but why such high demand? Skylake is really no more of a jump in performance than Haswell was. I would like to see sales figures, I still think the price gouging and supply problems for the 6700K is related to getting enough chips that will reach the desired clocks.

 

[Iching]

No offense, but why such high demand? Skylake is really no more of a jump in performance than Haswell was. I would like to see sales figures, I still think the price gouging and supply problems for the 6700K is related to getting enough chips that will reach the desired clocks.

Intel might be artificially limiting supply. Would you be surprised?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yes I would be surprised. I see no benefit to them. They dont get the extra money from retailers selling above list.

 

[nerp]

No offense, but why such high demand? Skylake is really no more of a jump in performance than Haswell was. I would like to see sales figures, I still think the price gouging and supply problems for the 6700K is related to getting enough chips that will reach the desired clocks.

I think mainly because people want the new platform. USB 3.1, M.2, Displayport on board. . . .

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes I would be surprised. I see no benefit to them. They dont get the extra money from retailers selling above list.

Especially since their business model, correct me if I'm wrong, is based on volume.

 

[jpiniero]

No offense, but why such high demand? Skylake is really no more of a jump in performance than Haswell was. I would like to see sales figures, I still think the price gouging and supply problems for the 6700K is related to getting enough chips that will reach the desired clocks.

It's #1 at Amazon, although you don't know what Amazon uses for the Best Sellers metrics and the time period.

Would not be surprised if the MSRP for i7 Kabylake-K is higher than $350, maybe $380.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yea, I dont know what #1 would mean in this context. AMD has nothing competitive right now, and most lower level Skylake chips probably go into pre-builts. I agree though, Intel could raise prices, because it looks like buyers are willing to pay higher. Since Kaby Lake is just a slight bump, the demand might not be as high as for Skylake though. If they offer good video codecs, there could be a demand for that.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's #1 at Amazon, although you don't know what Amazon uses for the Best Sellers metrics and the time period.

Would not be surprised if the MSRP for i7 Kabylake-K is higher than $350, maybe $380.

Interesting.

Three Skylake 6700K/6600K/6500
Four Haswell 4790K/4690K/4460/4590
Three AMD FX 6300/8350/8320

Are the top 10 processors at Amazon.
6700K/4790K/FX6300 being the top 3.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

For what it's worth, I just upgraded to a Skylake build. Part of this was updating my aging system (i7-950), and part of it was updating the GF's system (quad core q6600.. I think?). She got my old system, which brought her from DDR2 to 3, pcie 2.0 to 3.0, gained some USB 3.0 ports, and went from an NVidia gtx 275 to a gtx470 (which promptly died, so now it's a 960), and ran much cooler/quieter.

Mine went from aforementioned system to a 6700k and a 970gtx, and with a myriad of new connection methods, options for m.2 in the future, as well as a massive boost in basically every measureable aspect of a computing system. Also watercooled it with an AIO which was dead-simple to set up, and the system is basically silent while running at a 4.5ghz overclock. The difference was akin to me going from an old athalon64 build to that quad core/an 8800gtx like a decade back.

The people looking from last gen to this gen are missing the forest for the trees, I bet a LOT of people have been hanging on to Gen1/Gen2 i7's or i5's and have finally pulled the trigger on a new system.

 

[Phynaz]

It's #1 at Amazon, although you don't know what Amazon uses for the Best Sellers metrics and the time period.

Would not be surprised if the MSRP for i7 Kabylake-K is higher than $350, maybe $380.

Amazon updates their sales rank hourly.

 

[Sweepr]

PCLab tested popular VGAs including NVIDIA's Geforce GTX960/GTX970/GXT980 Ti and AMD's Radeon R9 380/390/Fury X with different CPUs (including Skylake-S):


- Part 1

- Part 2

Although FX is more competitive in the 'Welcome to the Jungle' level of the game, the less than stellar ST performance are a problem for Radeon VGAs here.

- Part 3

Impressive showing for Skylake, Core i7-6700K @ 4.7GHz almost twice as fast as the cheaper yet capable Core i5-4570 with the AMD dGPU.

Fallout 4 is particularly CPU intensive, here a Core i5-6600K @ 4.5GHz is close to 50% faster than the stock Core i5-4570 from the previous Haswell generation (with an OCed Fure X).

Once again AMD's own dGPUs generally perform much better when paired with Intel CPUs. Core i5-4570 was faster than 220W FX-9590 in all titles (including Crysis 3 Welcome to The Jungle), while Core i7-6700K is in a league of its own. Unfortunately no Haswell-E results.

http://pclab.pl/art60000.html


BTW Dell XPS 13 with Core i7-6560U (Iris Graphics 540) now available.

 

[Arachnotronic]

BTW Dell XPS 13 with Core i7-6560U (Iris Graphics 540) now available.

$1650? Boo!

 

[Rngwn]

$1650? Boo!

Not only that, HP decided to bump up $100 the price of the Spectre x360 15.6" with i7-6560U. Add that with the forced 16GB RAM configuration with $80 extra, now we have to pay $280 more than the base model (i5-6200U w/ 8GB RAM), or $140 more than the model with i7-6500U w/ 16GB RAM. (the difference was $180 and $40 before the price bump)

http://store.hp.com/us/en/ConfigureView?catalogId=10051&urlLangId=&langId=-1&storeId=10151&catEntryId=1175653&quantity=1

Heck, now the OEMS are not only produce el-cheapo crippled AMD Carrizo laptops with single-channel RAM Carrizo-L boards, but also have GT3e laptops set at the price practically unreachable from the mass!? What the [insert your expletive here] is wrong with the OEM?!

 

[Arachnotronic]

Not only that, HP decided to bump up $100 the price of the Spectre x360 15.6" with i7-6560U. Add that with the forced 16GB RAM configuration with $80 extra, now we have to pay $280 more than the base model (i5-6200U w/ 8GB RAM), or $140 more than the model with i7-6500U w/ 16GB RAM. (the difference was $180 and $40 before the price bump)

http://store.hp.com/us/en/ConfigureView?catalogId=10051&urlLangId=&langId=-1&storeId=10151&catEntryId=1175653&quantity=1

Heck, now the OEMS are not only produce el-cheapo crippled AMD Carrizo laptops with single-channel RAM Carrizo-L boards, but also have GT3e laptops set at the price practically unreachable from the mass!? What the [insert your expletive here] is wrong with the OEM?!

Can't believe I'm actually hoping for a MacBook Air with GT3e because it'll be the "budget" option. LOL!

 

[Rngwn]

Can't believe I'm actually hoping for a MacBook Air with GT3e because it'll be the "budget" option. LOL!

Hah, I had that hope before. But I fould the 1366x768 resolution on 11" and 1440x900 on 13" too low for my taste.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Once again AMD's own dGPUs generally perform much better when paired with Intel CPUs.

Did AMD inadvertently design a GPU that needs a faster processor, more so than Nvidia's GPU needs?

 

[Nothingness]

Interesting data about Skylake memory scaling with prime95: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=21015

 

[ShintaiDK]

Isn't it just showing what we know?

Skylake likes fast memory. It will be very interesting to see how the EDRAM one performs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting about the dual-rank, versus single-rank memory. I had actually heard the same story before, regarding older dual-rank DDR3, and newer single-rank modules, with the older modules performing better. Interesting that we see that same thing with Skylake.

 

[Nothingness]

Isn't it just showing what we know?

Yeah definitely, but more data is always nice to have

 

[Sweepr]

For those saying there's barely any performance gain from Sandy Bridge to Skylake I recommend Digital Foundry's latest article. Stock Core i5-6500 (DDR4-2666) was faster than 4.6GHz OCed Core i5-2500K (DDR3-2133) in all games tested (except Far Cry 4).

In an ideal world, we would want our processor to be able to sustain 60fps at all times and clearly this isn't happening - some of those figures are distressingly low, but both sets of numbers give us a picture of how a fully maxed-out Core i5 2500K bears up against Intel's modern processors - in terms of the average reported frame-rates, 4.6GHz of Sandy Bridge quad-core power combined with 2133MHz DDR3 is a fairly close match for a stock 3.2GHz Core i5 6500 paired with 2666MHz DDR4, while lowest reported frame-rates sit just a little higher. Intel often gets a lot of criticism for its iterative year-on-year improvements to CPU power, but the reality is that they do stack up over time and Skylake's migration to DDR4 with a wider range of memory bandwidth options also clearly counts for something. Pair the i5 6500 with 3200MHz DDR4 and it moves ahead of a maxed 2500K - no overclocking required. The other thing to remember is that the i5 6500 is a 65W processor - we can safely assume that overclocking the 2500K (a 95W part even before we up processor speed) - will be a lot more energy intensive. Those extra five years of hardware improvement produce tangible boost in terms of both performance and efficiency.

There are some scenarios where an overclocked Core i7 3770K will lag noticeably behind modern Skylake processors (Crysis 3 on the 6700K easily bests the 3770K with a 20fps leap in minimum frame-rate - and that was tested with 2666MHz DDR4, not the "good stuff") but overall it's good to see that there is still a viable upgrade path available to 2500K owners. Crysis 3 aside, you won't see a revelatory boost to general performance in most titles, but in areas where your CPU is truly struggling, there is an appreciable lift that makes for smoother, better gaming.

www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k

Impressive showing for Core i5-2500K though, still a capable CPU for the latest titles if you're willing to push it. And Core i7-3770K is a viable upgrade path.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The conclusion I would draw from that article is that for an upgrade from an overclocked SB to be worthwhile you need to go to an overclockable skylake. There is only 10% or less gain from 4.5 SB to stock 6500. And since bclock overclocking is now nerfed, one is forced to go to the K lineup. Personally, the only upgrade I would consider worthwhile would be from 2500K to hyperthreaded skylake, i7-6700k (or to overclocked 5820k).

 

[poofyhairguy]

The conclusion I would draw from that article is that for an upgrade from an overclocked SB to be worthwhile you need to go to an overclockable skylake.

Exactly. Look at the FPS minimums from that article:

Unless you overclock Skylake still isn't that generation that blows away the high water mark Sandy OC hit.

What I would love to see is an overclocked 2600k in there. Last year instead of a platform upgrade I just went from a 2500k to a 2600k (and got faster RAM) and I got a pretty noticeable boost in my gaming performance (partially because I can OC the 2600k higher). Seems like hyperthreading is making the 2500k become dated in an age of eight core consoles, but the 2600k still has a lot of life left.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The i5 6500 is 3.2Ghz base clock.

 

[Sweepr]

9-Way Intel Xeon E3 v5 Skylake Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux

- Intel Xeon E3 1220 v5: Quad-Core, 3.0GHz Base, 3.5GHz Turbo, 80 Watt, $193 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1230 v5: Quad-Core + HT, 3.4GHz Base, 3.8GHz Turbo, 80 Watt, $250 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1235L v5: Quad-Core, 2.0GHz Base, 3.0GHz Turbo, 25 Watt, $250 USD, HD Graphics P530
- Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5: Quad-Core + HT, 3.5GHz Base, 3.9GHz Turbo, 80 Watt TDP, $272 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1240L v5: Quad-Core + HT, 2.1GHz Base, 3.2GHz Turbo, 25 Watt TDP, $278 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1245 v5: Quad-Core + HT, 3.5GHz Base, 3.9GHz Turbo, 80 Watt, $284 USD, HD Graphics P530
- Intel Xeon E3 1260L v5: Quad-Core + HT, 2.9GHz Base, 3.9GHz Turbo, 45 Watt TDP, $294 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1270 v5: Quad-Core + HT, 3.6GHz Base, 4.0GHz Turbo, 80 Watt TDP, $328 USD
- Intel Xeon E3 1280 v5: Quad-Core + HT, 3.7GHz Base, 4.0GHz Turbo, 80 Watt TDP, $612

www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-skylake-xeon9&num=1

(25W TDP) Xeon E3 1240L v5 is faster than (125W TDP) FX-8370.


MSI Z170A Tomahawk Review

What does a good motherboard come down to today? Feature sets. What expansion options manufacturers can cram onto a board, how aggressively they can price it, and how it looks. MSI's Z170A Tomahawk makes a strong case for itself with those qualifications. It's an aggressively priced, budget motherboard, aimed at the gamers looking for the largest Z170 feature set at the lowest possible price.

What does 'entry level' get you?
For $150 or £100 you net yourself support for the latest and greatest Intel chipset, Z170. On top of that you get access to Intel's Skylake processors, support for up to 64GB of dual channel DDR4, clocking up to 3400 MT/s, three USB 2.0 ports (one on the board, two in the rear I/O), four USB 3.0 ports (two on board, two rear I/O), and two more USB 3.1 ports located in the rear I/O once again. Unfortunately there's no USB Type C. On top of that there's support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10, with up to six traditional SATA 6Gb/s drives, and support for two-way Crossfire running 16x4.

...Ultimately we've begun to face that age old problem once more. The scores between these boards are just so similar, that we have to ask, is it worth buying a premium motherboard? For the average Joe, probably not. For those looking for more expansion options, stronger audio solutions and more aesthetically pleasing boards, definitely.

www.pcgamer.com/msi-z170a-tomahawk-review