Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K IPC & Overclocking Review @ [H]

AK0tA said:
Well I'm now in a quandary? I have overtaken our church media center and need to build a new pc, the old is i5 xxx? 6g ram and struggles and mostly fails. The task required are video production and editing, digital sound board 32 channel mixing and processing, light animation and other stuff like this. I also pump video to 3 projectors and need to add 3 more monitors via a junction box. I use Blender, adobe master suite, handbrake, autocad/vectorwork and a few other programs in this line.

I have been waiting for skylake to come out but not overly impressed so my question is would a 5820K be just about as effective? Should I consider a Xeon processor? Never considered Xeon until just now and never build a system with one. Since gaming is not a concern input would be appreciated. If I played games on this system across 3 giant projectors I would never go back home.

Thanks.
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For what you are asking that computer to do, 16gb ram should be your minimum. 32gb would be recommended.

I also agree with dan. A 5820k should fit your needs well. i7's are great processors for that kind of workload. Xeons might be overkill honestly. The price/performance for what your doing doesn't make sense.
 
The problem is largely workload related as well with gaming. To a large extent it doesn't matter how much faster Intel makes a CPU (within the realms of plausibility) because the GPU performance demands of the entire rendering pipeline ends up being much larger in most usage cases. Intel CPUs for the last few generations have essentially been in the "good enough" category, and this may even be more of the case with DX12 (although there is a caveat here that may be an issue down the line).

I'm wondering if HardOCP will be doing a "real world gaming" exploration similar to the GPU reviews?
 
Might I recommend that any of you still using a 2500k sit down on a friends system with a 4790k or one of these new Skylake 6700k CPUs and actually use the thing in Windows 8.1 or 10 for a few minutes? You might decide it's time for that upgrade after all.
 
You would have to use a 4690k and 6600k to eliminate the variable being the extra threads offered by hyperthreading or cache difference. Or conversely a 2600k as a starting point comparison.
 
WildMonkey said:
Am I never going to find a reason to upgrade from a 2500K?!

F U Intel!
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From [email protected] to 4790k@stock it was a huge upgrade for me. Performance gains are often quite large and I play a very large number of different games, old and new. At 1440p. Even with a meager 970 I got huge gains for gaming - with my 980 ti now it's even bigger. I got way more out of it than I expected by looking at benchmarks, honestly. Minimum fps also got much better. Of course there are games that are so heavy on the GPU the CPU matters little but in my experience there's not THAT many of those with a decent 2014-2015 GPU. Mind you I'm the kind of guy who thinks 60fps is crap and plays without AA/DSR (but others settings as high as they can be pushed) but 1440p is about as demanding as 1080p with AA which is what many people are still stuck with.

6700k would be an even bigger jump. HT also is very useful to me for multi-tasking (notably I can do ultra low latency audio processing while playing games and stuff, which was doable but with some ugly "pops" on the 2500k) and I have not encountered negative scaling with old single threaded games or anything like that.

There are benchmarks/reviews out there that are just plain bad (and that applies to GPU reviews too). I'm not going 6700k like I said before as it's not much better than a 4790k obviously but Sandy Bridge users who say they will not upgrade should seriously reconsider, plus Sandy CPUs still sell super easily and at a very good price. 2500k cost me 200€ in 2011 sold it for 105€ in 2015...My Sandy mobo cost me 120€ in 2011 and I got 60€ out of it a month ago as well.
 
i dont get why people with an i7 920 whine that this wouldn't be an upgrade. skylake shits all over the 920 and yes, i am still using one too. sure, it still runs fine, it runs pretty much any game with a good gpu. however, skylake IS a lot faster. thing is, though, that most people (including myself) don't need that kind of cpu power. the only application i can think of that pushes any cpu to its limits is video encoding.
 
I'm still on a 2500k/Z68 at 4.6ghz and see no reason to upgrade. Unless I have a hardware failure it looks like my 4+ year old system is sticking around a while longer.
 
almost 250 comments , 90% are from 2500k owners who say they wont upgrade :eek: :eek:
well good for you.
 
T_A said:
almost 250 comments , 90% are from 2500k owners who say they wont upgrade :eek: :eek:
well good for you.
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i cant wait to upgrade my haswell at 4.8
windows 10 will be a beast and so will the IPC
lol
probably cost me about 150-200 to upgrade , great boost after reselling my gear
 
Advil said:
Might I recommend that any of you still using a 2500k sit down on a friends system with a 4790k or one of these new Skylake 6700k CPUs and actually use the thing in Windows 8.1 or 10 for a few minutes? You might decide it's time for that upgrade after all.
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Fella, I could sit you down in front of an Athlon 5350 and a 6700K and you wouldn't notice the difference in everyday desktop usage. Unless you have specific intensive CPU workloads in mind, you're going to notice zero difference between Sandy Bridge and Skylake. Certainly in games the numbers are nothing more than a placebo, given you're going to be limited by your GPU in almost any real-world scenario (i.e. not running at 1024x768 and trying to tell the difference between 270fps and 290fps).
 
This is all i care about
dolphin and im sure epsxe will fly

Final Fantasy at 2560x1440
eat your heart out ps4, i own both and the new final fantasy remakes however i love emulation and retro!

01%20-%20Gains%20over%20Sandy_575px.png
 
Aretak said:
Fella, I could sit you down in front of an Athlon 5350 and a 6700K and you wouldn't notice the difference in everyday desktop usage. Unless you have specific intensive CPU workloads in mind, you're going to notice zero difference between Sandy Bridge and Skylake. Certainly in games the numbers are nothing more than a placebo, given you're going to be limited by your GPU in almost any real-world scenario (i.e. not running at 1024x768 and trying to tell the difference between 270fps and 290fps).
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That's absolutely untrue. Even just browsing the web or opening/using some common applications (heck even just Microsoft Office or Open Office...) I can tell the difference between older and newer CPUs because of how heavy websites (and applications in general) have become. It's night and day. Just try using older hardware with recent applications, it's a nightmare. I have a netbook from 2009 and while it's working great with amazing battery life the CPU is just a nightmare (freezes waiting for the CPU etc.) with recent applications, even basic desktop stuff. But back then it felt great. Now, if you had said "everyday desktop usage between 2500k and 6700k" I'd have agreed, of course, but you didn't say that.

And I've already voiced my thoughts on the gaming matter. I also disagree completely there. There are larges differences unless your GPU is weak or you ask too much out of it (e.g. 4k on a 780? sure your CPU will hardly matter at all then...). Of course that's by my standards and they are probably higher than average but I'm still 100% convinced that a great many people refusing to upgrade from Sandy are reading bad benchmarks etc. (or only reading what they want to read) and don't realize what they are missing out.
 
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The issue was nailed in one of reviews - I think it was Tom's. For the price of 6700k system, you can get six core Haswell-E. Yes, you get less modern chipset than z170, but faster platform for workloads than Skylake.

Right now on my 4790k I feel like guys on 2500k for last few generations. It will take 3 iterations of CPU to get an upgrade warranted - unless they will make some breakthroughs to chipset earlier on. But IMO, if I'd switch, I'd now go for E series.
 
kalston said:
That's absolutely untrue. Even just browsing the web or opening some common applications I can tell the difference between older and newer CPUs because of how heavy websites (and applications in general) have become. And I've already voiced my thoughts on the gaming matter. I also disagree completely there. There are larges differences unless your GPU is weak or you ask too much out of it (e.g. 4k on a 780? sure your CPU will hardly matter at all then...)
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to add to your reply
i can tell you right now that some games will require more IPC, GTA V and some poorly programmed games can you say "early access games on steam"
i can tell you right now no matter what GPU you have in SLI etc a game called 7 days to die is hurting for more IPC power. I am looking forward to upgrading my i7 haswell at 4.7-4.8

i ran this game with 2x 980s ti vs my overclocked 980s and not a bit of improvement at 2560x1440

big sandbox games will love skylake until something better is released or these developers finally learn to program
 
Another 2500k owner chiming in to say "no thanks" to skylake. My money would be better spent on upgrading my 680. Then again, kinda knew this would be the point. Other than for very specialist tasks, CPUs have been 'fast enough' since the start of the core i series.
 
DarthV said:
Another 2500k owner chiming in to say "no thanks" to skylake. My money would be better spent on upgrading my 680. Then again, kinda knew this would be the point. Other than for very specialist tasks, CPUs have been 'fast enough' since the start of the core i series.
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At this point it's more of a motherboard and chip-set / feature race. I don't expect to see a lot of difference from my 2600K that I was able to once get 24 Prime stable @ 5Ghz. (Water cooled and over volted to hell) It's more about the motherboard and the features it offers. Coming from a Z68 motherboard I'm looking forward to DDR4, M.2, PCIe 3.0 (that does not drop down to 1.1 or 2 in sli) better USB support and USB 3.1.

I don't think the CPU has gotten "fast enough". Maybe for gaming, being most of the load is on the 2-3 high end GPU. But for people like me that run 2-3 VM all the time on top of keeping a dozen things open at a time. But if I was just a gamer, I would agree with you 110%.
 
DarthV said:
Another 2500k owner chiming in to say "no thanks" to skylake. My money would be better spent on upgrading my 680. Then again, kinda knew this would be the point. Other than for very specialist tasks, CPUs have been 'fast enough' since the start of the core i series.
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i'm starting to think the same. i got all amped up on sky lake ready to spend $500 but with the benches it's looking like i should stick with my 2500K. since i was already thinking of spending maybe i'll spend that $500 on upgrading my 670 SLI to a 980 Ti :)
 
TDSlam720 said:
Unless it's 4k I don't care. You guys can hang onto the past I really don't care. The tired memes of PCIE doesn't really matter, DDR4 doesn't matter, extra cores are useless is starting to crack. I'll catch a bench here and there showing a few frame increase here and there. Maybe average frames the same but minimums way up. You can start to see it and peice it together that these old platforms are aging.

Be defensive all you want about the platform you're on and justify why you're not spending money on the newest stuff, but I though my this was [H], shouldn't we all be on 4k by now trying to scape together every few frames we can get?
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Do you even know what Hard OCP stands for? Overclockers comparison page. It's a means to determine if that almighty flagship product is really needed, or if a lower priced unit with some OC'ing applied will suffice.

People from all walks of life all over the world visit [H] so they can squeeze every drop of performance out of their systems, regardless of budget. Think about some of the classics that this site has been crucial as a source of help for: Celeron 300A, AMD Venice, lower-end Core 2 Duo/Quad, every AMD X2/X3/X4 and all the way up to X6.

4K is neat and all, but it's still in such a mediocre state that it's generally not worth it for the premium price tag that a 4K setup commands...and there isn't enough GPU power available yet to truly push it. Yes, this is all subjective...but a majority here aren't wanting to or aren't able to purchase $2000+ for just GPUs on top of the 4K display price premium. Shit, I've got quite a bit of money invested between just my GPUs and 1080p display so I can push 144 Hz, and I wouldn't consider changing it right now.

Doesn't mean they're not [H]...as there are other places on the web for those that truly aren't:

www.Apple.com
www.Xbox.com
www.PlayStation.com
www.Nintendo.com
www.<pretty much any other tech site>.com
 
That's just not the case anymore. Two 980Tis will push 4k just fine and it's only a matter of time before one card will be enough.
 
Wag said:
That's just not the case anymore. Two 980Tis will push 4k just fine and it's only a matter of time before one card will be enough.
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In your opinion. The majority of PC gamers say otherwise.
 
kalston said:
plus Sandy CPUs still sell super easily and at a very good price. 2500k cost me 200€ in 2011 sold it for 105€ in 2015...My Sandy mobo cost me 120€ in 2011 and I got 60€ out of it a month ago as well.
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Gee, I wonder why?
 
CompMage said:
I don't think the CPU has gotten "fast enough". Maybe for gaming, being most of the load is on the 2-3 high end GPU. But for people like me that run 2-3 VM all the time on top of keeping a dozen things open at a time. But if I was just a gamer, I would agree with you 110%.
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Does Skylake support VT-x and the other virtualizaion features?
 
Thanks for the review [H]. Will look into details a bit later. From a fast skim of the data, looks like this will finally be my upgrade from my 4.6 Ghz LGA 775 system.
 
CompMage said:
At this point it's more of a motherboard and chip-set / feature race. I don't expect to see a lot of difference from my 2600K that I was able to once get 24 Prime stable @ 5Ghz. (Water cooled and over volted to hell) It's more about the motherboard and the features it offers. Coming from a Z68 motherboard I'm looking forward to DDR4, M.2, PCIe 3.0 (that does not drop down to 1.1 or 2 in sli) better USB support and USB 3.1.

I don't think the CPU has gotten "fast enough". Maybe for gaming, being most of the load is on the 2-3 high end GPU. But for people like me that run 2-3 VM all the time on top of keeping a dozen things open at a time. But if I was just a gamer, I would agree with you 110%.
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Sure you get some new shiny features, but you're talking about $500+ (even more in canuckland) for those features and not a whole lot of extra horsepower for that money.

For general computer use, yeah they are fast enough. You're talking about more specialized cases. I have no issue running a couple VMs on my work 3770 & 16gb. Only slowdowns I run into are IO based. If you're CPU bound in that case, you're probably better off going with X99 than skylake.
 
But, but, but... memory speed doesn't affect gaming performance. Pretty much everybody posting in the Memory subforum says so.

/sarcasm

Flamesuit on
 
cyclone3d said:
But, but, but... memory speed doesn't affect gaming performance. Pretty much everybody posting in the Memory subforum says so.

/sarcasm

Flamesuit on
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It pretty much has not since Intel put the memory controller on the CPU however it seems to have some effect on Skylake.
 
cyclone3d said:
But, but, but... memory speed doesn't affect gaming performance. Pretty much everybody posting in the Memory subforum says so.

/sarcasm

Flamesuit on
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So a new cpu architecture does better with higher memory speeds...that somehow means the old ones do too? Lolwut.
 
MorgothPl said:
The issue was nailed in one of reviews - I think it was Tom's. For the price of 6700k system, you can get six core Haswell-E. Yes, you get less modern chipset than z170, but faster platform for workloads than Skylake.

Right now on my 4790k I feel like guys on 2500k for last few generations. It will take 3 iterations of CPU to get an upgrade warranted - unless they will make some breakthroughs to chipset earlier on. But IMO, if I'd switch, I'd now go for E series.
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This is very much how I feel.

If Skylake had been 6 core with quad channel memory I would upgrade, but I don't see the point as it stands right now. If I need more game performance I will upgrade my video card what I wanted out the CPU was more power for video encoding.

I do not need to upgrade, but my PC is almost 7 years old, if a core component failed I would have to rebuild anyway and I do not like to push a system to failure. It is hard to see Skylake as a better choice over Haswell-E. I am waiting to see if the MB tech offers something new but so far I just do not see it. This is why I feel disappointed.
 
So wait, I thought that half of the point of the K series processors was that they would automatically overclock themselves as long as their temperatures were low. I seem to recall that from Intel's literature back when they first came out. Is manually messing with timings even still necessary at this point?
 
drescherjm said:
It pretty much has not since Intel put the memory controller on the CPU however it seems to have some effect on Skylake.
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xIronCrossx said:
So a new cpu architecture does better with higher memory speeds...that somehow means the old ones do too? Lolwut.
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Tell that to my older setups and my current setup.

i7-920, then XEON W3580, then i7-3820, then i7-4930k.

The faster memory speeds do in fact make a difference in games, especially so when the CPUs are overclocked.

With the i7-920, BF2 was super easy to tell the difference. 1066 and it was stutters all over the place, go up to 1333 or even better 1600 and it smoothed out. My personal one I had the RAM running at 2000 and it was so much smoother in pretty much everything even if the fps numbers didn't reflect it as much.

Same goes for the other setups. I constantly saw/see people posting about how they get low fps or stuttering in games with pretty similar systems and the only real difference is mine is running a much higher RAM speed.

Now if people are upping there RAM speed and using way too loose of timings, then yeah, the added latency is going to negate the increased throughput.

When you do it right, it makes a very noticeable difference, especially in certain games.

Maybe I should do a comparison test with different RAM speeds, etc. once my main system is back up.

Maybe even do a set of dual channel tests so games that are limited more by RAM speed should be even more noticeable.

This is just from personal experience so far. I generally don't run benchmarks anymore like I used to years ago.
 
cyclone3d said:
With the i7-920, BF2 was super easy to tell the difference. 1066 and it was stutters all over the place, go up to 1333 or even better 1600 and it smoothed out. My personal one I had the RAM running at 2000 and it was so much smoother in pretty much everything even if the fps numbers didn't reflect it as much.
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I think this is what the techreport graphs show well with their 99th percentile graphs.

Those occasional hitches don't show up much in avg framerate, but have a huge impact on perceived performance.
 
As a 2500K owner I'm probably going to upgrade (reluctantly) but as some reviews suggest, I'm going to wait until there are better mobos out there to take full advantage.
 
WildMonkey said:
As a 2500K owner I'm probably going to upgrade (reluctantly) but as some reviews suggest, I'm going to wait until there are better mobos out there to take full advantage.
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What's wrong with the initial batch of mobos? I haven't looked at them in depth but it looked like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI at least had a pretty decent range.
 
From what I have seen so far from looking at a dozen benchmark sites you can justify a 6700k upgrade for gaming as long as you take advantage of the DDR4 performance bump.

Provided you have at least DDR4 2666 CL15, preferably higher, you get enough extra performance at stock 4.2Ghz to make it semi-justifiable. If you can get a truly stable overclock on air at 4.3 or 4.4 you should have between a 5 and 10 percent lead over a stock 4790k in game at real resolutions.

It's not monumental, but not terrible either.
 
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