5820K results are subject to the luck of the OC draw. Only a fool would buy one to run at stock, where is is seriously outmatched in ST performance by DC, BDW-C, and SKL.
Most 5820K's can overclock to 4.3-4.5Ghz and you can even pay a small premium over the $350 i7 6700K at Silicon Lottery. Alternatively, Intel sells the $25 Performance Tuning plan so you can jack the voltage as high as you want to get there and even if the CPU dies, Intel will replace it.
Boom! These 2 posts by JM Popaleetus are the definitive posts right here:
5820K OC > i7 6700K for productivity.
Since productivity benchmarks like encoding/decoding/rendering/photo editing are giving the highest gains for Skylake over Haswell, it's only fair then if someone actually uses their computer for those tasks that we compare 5820K to the 6700K and not just 4770K/4790K to 6700K. In that scenario, i7 6700K @ 4.7Ghz gets destroyed by a 4.5Ghz i7 5820K.
And of course for modern gaming where games use
> 4 cores, X99 platform will win.
The small increase in IPC on Skylake won't overcome having 2 additional 4.4-4.5Ghz 5820K cores long-term. With DX12 allowing greater multi-core scaling, 6-core CPUs will become even faster.
We're not even talking about DDR4-3000+
Skylake-S loves fast DDR4 kits and faster memory helps Core i7 6700K beat Core i7 4790K despite lower Turbo clocks.
Can't take AnandTech's review seriously after seeing this.
Still from your benchs the i7 6700K gets killed in GTA V in gaming against a stock 3.0Ghz 5960X. Looking at previous testing of i7 4790K vs. 5820K/5930K/5960X in GTA V,
6-core X99 platform has a big advantage. Add Crysis 3, The Witcher 3, Ryse Son of Rome, 5820K OC > i7 6700K OC. Even DDR4-4000 won't save 6700K in gaming or productivity situations where 6-cores are beneficial. Are you willing to hedge that over the next 3-5 years there will be almost no AAA games where a 6-cores won't be beneficial?
If someone is spending $350 USD on a CPU + $150-200 on a motherboard, at that point, X99 is not a far stretch. Certainly once Broadwell-E launches or Skylake-E, if Intel maintains these prices, it's game over for the 6700K for enthusiasts. Even now I'd pick the 5820K over 6700K for keeping for 4-5 years.
"With a very small pricing difference between an i7-6700K system and one based around the i7-5820K, consumers must decide carefully whether they prefer the greater core count and PCIe connectivity of Haswell-E or the overclocking headroom and modern chipset for Skylake. For gamers, that’s a tough choice. But to users with heavy workloads that benefit from CPU cores, the Haswell-E chip is the smarter buy." ~ KitGuru
That sounds like at worst a 5820K OC won't be much worse for gaming, but when taking into account the overall balance of the entire PC, 5820K OC > i7 6700K because it excels not at just gaming but everything else too.
At least a few reviewers mentioned they could get it to 5GHz+ with watercooling, others will update the results soon (some reviews were rushed), BIOS also needs some tuning.
Now considering most reviewers got 4.7-4.8 GHz with little effort (after Broadwell-K's 4.2-4.3 GHz)
No, it's just you omitting the MOST important facts such as 24/7 safe voltage operation max voltages and what type of cooling is actually required to get there. It certaintly isn't "little effort" as a $30 CM 212 Evo heatsink isn't going to get you there.
1. Temperatures - Intel still using cheap TIM instead of solder on the X99 platform.
Review 1 - Kit-Guru using Corsair H100i.
"We managed a comfortable 4.8GHz from our retail 6700K chip while using a 1.4V core voltage (which translated into 1.392V under load with our LLC settings). This frequency was perfectly stable for extended periods of stress testing and temperature levels were well below the worrying 90°C mark" ~ Kit Guru
So it took a $90+ CLC to not get to 90*C at 1.392V.
BTW, KitGuru states:
"We tested a variety overclocking configurations to find the best settings for our chip. In order to keep temperatures in check and maintain voltages at what we are told are safe levels for 24/7 usage, the maximum CPU Core voltage was set at 1.40V."
^ Please go check all the other reviews and see how much voltage they had to pump to get 4.7-4.8Ghz overclocks. It's one thing to get 4.7-4.8Ghz for 1 day of testing and totally another to have your system running/crunching 24/7 for 3-5 years straight at 100% load.
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Review 2 - TechSpot
"The Core i7-6700K was an overclocking delight, reaching 4.8GHz with no effort at all. To achieve this frequency we simply hit the quick OC button and selected the maximum value of 4.8GHz. The system reset, loaded Windows 10 and we began testing. Keep in mind the ambient room temperature was just 21 degrees and we were using the Noctua NH-D15.
Under full load the 4.8GHz overclock did see the CPU reach 90 degrees though it remained stable. "
21*C ambient is very low for many people and Noctua NH-D15 is a $90+ USD cooler. That means if someone's ambient temperatures are 24-28C, this 4.8Ghz would likely fail on 99% of CPU coolers in the world given that Noctua NH-D14 is easily in the top 3 of all air coolers.
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Review 3 - Ars Technica using Corsair H100i GTX
"With Haswell, a boost to around 4.7 GHz could be reached, but going up to 5GHz was really tricky without a really superb cooling setup and tweaking a lot of advanced settings. It’s worth noting that with Skylake the approximate voltage required for the higher overclocks is 1.4V, while on Haswell it’s about 1.3V.
With 4.8GHz, we had settled on a voltage of 1.39V, and every test completed without a problem, except for the Handbrake video encode, which crashed once. Increasing the core voltage to 1.4V solved this, with temperatures of 92°C, which are manageable with a decent all-in-one liquid cooling system. "
Do I need to keep going?
Your comment that most reviewers are getting 4.7-4.8Ghz overclocks with "little effort" is highly misleading. Little effort is getting 4.4-4.5Ghz on i7-2600K on the stock $5 Intel heatsink, not requiring a $90-100 cooling solution to get there and still approach 90C!
At stock a Core i7 6700K is 38% faster than Core i7 2600K in CPU-bound games according to Hardware.fr, which means that it will lose even when OCed to 5GHz.
Sure, 5GHz Sandy Bridge is still an awesome chip but 4.6-4.8GHz Skylake-S will be noticeably faster when you are CPU limited.
Don't cherry-pick 640x480 / 720P gaming no one will do with a 2600K OC and a discrete GPU.
In real world gaming, i7 6700K OC vs. i7 2600K @ 4.5-4.8Ghz is not a good upgrade unless one already did the following:
1) Upgraded their monitor to 1440P/4K/144Hz/FreeSync/GSync;
2) Have
at least 980 SLI/Fury CF
3) Have a 1TB SSD or a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD
4) Upgraded their headphones/speakers
Any of those 4 upgrades is going to be better than moving from i7 2600K OC to i7 6700K OC.
For productivity, 5820K OC walks all over i7 6700K OC. MicroCenter has 5820K + Asrock X99 Extreme 4 for $350 after rebate and combo discount. This board is higher end than most Z170 boards because it comes with 60A power chokes, 12K Platinum caps and high-end sound. For example,
the vast majority of Asus Z170 boards have crappy/budget 887/892 onboard sound, not the ALC1150/Creative. That means without proper research, one could easily end up with a $180 Z170 board that's worse than an X99 board.
USB 3.1 can be added via a $20-30 add-in card or one can just buy an X99 with USB 3.1.
Skylake is the
worst Tock in Intel's history since Conroe. Nehalem/Lynnfield gave about a 15-17.5% increase in IPC, Sandy another 15-16%, and Haswell another 16-17%. Skylake is just 9% faster (Haswell - Broadwell: 3.3% & Broadwell to Skylake: 5.7% => 1.033x1.057 = 1.09), but you sure keep defending it and even implying SB/IVB users should upgrade. 25% faster than i7 2600K OC after 4 years + 8 months (2600K launched
Jan 3, 2011) is pathetic, considering this 25% increase in IPC drops < 10% gaming.
How many of the reviewers actually spent time properly tweaking? from the few I've read so far they just whacked the voltage up to 1.4 and saw what that gave them. Thee might be more to it than that especially considering fivr is now on the boards.
But even to get to 4.7-4.9Ghz requires expensive cooling. Granted, a lot of us have a good cooler so it won't be a problem but temperature is going to be an issue going far beyond that without a cherry-picked/golden sample.
Also, 1.4V is already pretty high for a 14nm node. More investigative analysis is required to assess if it's even safe voltage for prolonged 24/7 operation for 14nm transistors. A lot of people could hit 4.4Ghz on i7 920 but if it required excessive voltage, you could kill your chip over time.
Where Skylake seems to be a big winner is with their 35W T series, which should naturally lead to excellent i5/i7 CPUs in laptops