Broadwell-K & Skylake-S on track for Q2'15

According to new leaked roadmap posted at the Chinese VR-Zone:

http://chinese.vr-zone.com/119624/intel-will-update-to-14nm-broadwell-and-skylake-s-for-desktop-in-2015-second-quater-06282014/




I don't know if this has any baring on the release of Skylake-K but as far as I'm concerned the quickest way for Broadwell-K to come to market and then be replaced would still take far too long. So I sure as hell hope it's not affected by anymore delays; currently we understand that the unlocked Skylake chips are scheduled for a Q4'15 release. So hopefully no more than 4 to 6 months of this Broadwell-K flash in the pan nonsense before we can get a real chip worthy of upgrading to.

What's the big deal with Skylake? Does it retain the FIVR?

So mainstreamers will be waiting for Skylake then. It's a good thing platforms are not changing overnight then.

melk said:

What's the big deal with Skylake? Does it retain the FIVR?

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I would have to say the biggest things with Skylake are power efficiency improvements and the DDR4 memory support. Very, very likely they're going to retain the FIVR especially for the mobile versions of Skylake.

Unfortunately, if sources are to be believed, Skylake-EP (likely become Skylake-E) processors will have PCI-E 4.0 support.

From what I recall, mobile and embedded Broadwell are coming out first in Q4 2014. Broadwell K will come in Q1 2015. If it was me and I didn't want Haswell-E, I'd wait for Skylake.

melk said:

What's the big deal with Skylake? Does it retain the FIVR?

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Can't see why it wouldn't. That is about 1/3 the reason for the impressive idle power consumption Haswell enjoys. The other 2/3 is when you combine this with the new Connected Idle states plus the completely reworked software power management stack (to take advantage of these new hardware features).

That 50% battery life improvement is not something Intel would give up willingly

melk said:

What's the big deal with Skylake? Does it retain the FIVR?

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All rumors and reported leaks indicate that it does not.

With this info I'm keeping with my current estimate of Sky-E being available for Xmas 2016.

Blue_Scholar said:

All rumors and reported leaks indicate that it does not.

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So what are they going to do instead to cut idle power?

Cool, there's already information on Skylake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)

It says there are 35, 65 and 95 watt models with configurable TDPs. And it will support both PCIe4 and can use DDR3 as well as DDR4.

We'll still have either 4 or 2 cores but look at that eDRAM!

"at the same clock speed, DDR3 is faster than DDR4 thanks to its intrinsically lower latency"
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...t-configurable-tdps-dramatic-power-reductions

coolpurplefan said:

Cool, there's already information on Skylake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)

It says there are 35, 65 and 95 watt models with configurable TDPs. And it will support both PCIe4 and can use DDR3 as well as DDR4.

We'll still have either 4 or 2 cores but look at that eDRAM!

Click to expand...

PCI-E 4.0 is E variant only.

Blue_Scholar said:

PCI-E 4.0 is E variant only.

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wut

Does this mean they want you to pay more for a CPU to get a more powerful GPU?

Haha, if this is the case, it reminds me of the fact Linux drivers are not available on the latest motherboards, Apple won't allow "Hackingtoshes" and uh, I forgot the other thing I was going to name...

defaultluser said:

So what are they going to do instead to cut idle power?

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They may no longer need it, seeing the new TDP's it looks like Intel has gutted power requirements across the board and decided to give the high end some extra juice which I think is actually for their Iris Pro.

coolpurplefan said:

We'll still have either 4 or 2 cores but look at that eDRAM!

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The eDRAM is purely for their higher end on-chip GPU's, that being their "Iris pro" level. This isn't for the HDX000 GPU's and its yet to be seen if the CPU can gain anything from this as their L3 cache will be millions of times faster. I'm quite excited for these particular chips for my small box.

coolpurplefan said:

"at the same clock speed, DDR3 is faster than DDR4 thanks to its intrinsically lower latency"
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...t-configurable-tdps-dramatic-power-reductions

Click to expand...

This is common for every DDR release in history. The big advantage is the new headroom to develop faster memory and the biggest one being larger densities, think 8gb standard sticks instead of 2-4gb standard sticks.

coolpurplefan said:

Does this mean they want you to pay more for a CPU to get a more powerful GPU?

Click to expand...

Name of the game, but if you think you need PCIe 4.0 to run SLI or a high end single GPUs don't kid yourself. We aren't even sure that we can saturate 3.0 with a current $3k GPU set up. Also if you are going to purchase something that may challenge PCIe 3.0 you may want to consider getting the best of the best.