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

I hate the fact that it looks like I can't get my work stable at even [email protected]. It passes stress tests like realbench with 4.5 and same voltage, but when you see in all articles reviewers getting at least to 4.7 with same 1.35v - I get jelly and angry with my sample. Do i need to set up VCCIO and SA voltage as well if I'm using XMP profile. Currently they're on auto. Maybe they can help me achieve stable [email protected]?
 
Raendor said:
I hate the fact that it looks like I can't get my work stable at even [email protected]. It passes stress tests like realbench with 4.5 and same voltage, but when you see in all articles reviewers getting at least to 4.7 with same 1.35v - I get jelly and angry with my sample. Do i need to set up VCCIO and SA voltage as well if I'm using XMP profile. Currently they're on auto. Maybe they can help me achieve stable [email protected]?
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Are you trying to run the cache at the same speed as the core? If so, lock it at 4.2ghz and try again. That was my issue when pushing the overclock higher. As I recall, the cache started being the limiter at around 4.4ghz for me.
 
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bmg said:
Are you trying to run the cache at the same speed as the core? If so, lock it at 4.2ghz and try again. That was my issue when pushing the overclock higher. As I recall, the cache started being the limit at around 4.4ghz for me.
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Not really, I didn't even change cache clock from its default value as I've seen the performance gain is little to none in everyday usage and gaming.
 
Raendor said:
Not really, I didn't even change cache clock from its default value as I've seen the performance gain is little to none in everyday usage and gaming.
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True on the cache. On the VCCIO and SA, I'm using 2x8gb of the new GSkill 3200 cas 14 ram, and it works fine for me with XMP. The board automatically bumps up the voltages a modest amount and I've had zero issues. If I were you I'd take note of what the voltages are with the auto setting, them bump them up a bit. It might not help, but simple enough to try. I seem to remember at least one person reporting that working for them.
 
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bmg said:
True on the cache. On the VCCIO and SA, I'm using 2x8gb of the new GSkill 3200 cas 14 ram, and it works fine for me with XMP. The board automatically bumps up the voltages a modest amount and I've had zero issues. If I were you I'd take note of what the voltages are with the auto setting, them bump them up a bit. It might not help, but simple enough to try. I seem to remember at least one person reporting that working for them.
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Are you using adaptive mode by any chance? It seems like i have a problem running any OC with it. I pass realbench stresstest just fine with my normal [email protected] OC in manual, but when I switch to adaptive mode I get reboots, freezes and other nasty stuff. Am I doing it right? I set Additional Turbo Core Voltage to the same 1.35 (I even tried 1.375) and leave Offset Voltage on Auto (Funny thing that while it runs for some time in adaptive it never sucks more than 1.298v). Because of this I have to run always in manual 1.35 mode which is not very wise during light tasks. That's the other issue I have with this CPU.
 
big change from a i7-920 with two 5870s, to a i7-6700k and one gtx 980 ti.
 
Figured I'd chime in. Sold my 4790K setup and was able to get a 6700K for a small amount extra. I was able to get 4.6Ghz at 1.35v, and I'm seeing major gains in windows fluidity, also in game loadings etc. Especially between zones in BO3 Zombies, which used to stutter has smoothed out nicely.
 
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Voxata said:
Figured I'd chime in. Sold my 4790K setup and was able to get a 6700K for a small amount extra. I was able to get 4.6Ghz at 1.35v, and I'm seeing major gains in windows fluidity, also in game loadings etc. Especially between zones in BO3 Zombies, which used to stutter has smoothed out nicely.
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What board did you end up going with?
 
I went with the Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7, I liked the alpine ridge capabilities and dual m.2 x4. Not so much the Intel+Killer LAN. I'm just using the Intel, but being able to bridge would have been nice. XMP with a 3600C16 kit g.skill skill (on the QVL) went off without a hitch and is bomb stable.
 
verylostindeed said:
Just upgraded to i7-6700k from my i7-920, which did 5+ years of solid service. I ran the 920 at 4 ghz. So far, messing around with the 6700k in the 4.5-4.7 ghz range. And, frankly, I'm not seeing any material difference in games.
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And you won't unless you change your resolution to 640 x 400. AMD not being able to compete with Intel allows the latter do nothing and still make a lot money.
 
Iching said:
And you won't unless you change your resolution to 640 x 400. AMD not being able to compete with Intel allows the latter do nothing and still make a lot money.
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I went from a Yorkfield 9550 to a Skylake 6600. Other than the motherboard and the RAM, I made no other hardware changes. My GPU before and after was a GTX670. I saw significant improvements across the board. Granted, that was a bigger leap. My GPU was not performing up to its full potential with such outdated processing power. If he's not running a GPU that was CPU-limited like mine, he won't see much difference, but in the right situations, it matters.

As soon as I finish playing some older games that run fine on my new setup, I look forward to upgrading the GPU with something Pascal.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
I went from a Yorkfield 9550 to a Skylake 6600. Other than the motherboard and the RAM, I made no other hardware changes. My GPU before and after was a GTX670. I saw significant improvements across the board. Granted, that was a bigger leap. My GPU was not performing up to its full potential with such outdated processing power. If he's not running a GPU that was CPU-limited like mine, he won't see much difference, but in the right situations, it matters.

As soon as I finish playing some older games that run fine on my new setup, I look forward to upgrading the GPU with something Pascal.
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Q9550 is ancient. It was ancient even when x58 came out.
 
Iching said:
Check my sig. x58 is no slouch and Q9550 was never a real Quad Core.:)
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I might be failing to detect sarcasm again. :) The Q9550 has four cores on it, did it not? That was plenty real enough back in the day. AMD's "native" quad-core marketing was just that.
 
There's no sarcasm here, mate. It seriously wasn't a true Quad, was it? It had four cores but it was more like 2 cores slapped together.
 
Iching said:
There's no sarcasm here, mate. It seriously wasn't a true Quad, was it? It had four cores but it was more like 2 cores slapped together.
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Which made no difference. It was still faster than a dual core CPU and still faster than AMD had at the time. AMD used the "native" quad core BS as a marketing approach. Functionally, two die's slapped together may not have been an elegant approach, but it works. Discounting the four cores is the same as discounting the power of dual socket CPU systems running a pair of Xeon E5 2699's or something. It's not as elegant as a native 36 core CPU would be, but again, a pair of those would still out performs any current single CPU in multi-threaded applications.
 
I've made a thread about upgrading from 3770k to 6700k and decided to wait with upgrading.
But now I'm thinking again about upgrading to 6700k.
I'm planning on going all white/blue build with 6700k, Phantek Enthoo Primo with custom all glass side panel, custom water cooling for cpu/GPUs/motherboard, gigabyte gaming g1 motherboard (i want to get rid of my pcie zxr and gigabyte got it integrated) and a m.2 ssd.
I know gaming won't make much difference but I feel something in my current system is choking my 980Ti's.
Now, sure I could wait for 6/8/10 core Broadwell-E, but again, since I'm gaming, I don't think that will increase performance that much, perhaps even lower it since from what I've noticed more core mean lower overclock.
But I'm still not 100% convinced that I should spend €3000 on a gaming rig. It's not as much as getting a faster machine as building a new computer which makes it exciting :)
Can anyone help me decide? Give me more reasons to upgrade :)
 
I'm gaming at 4k so it's almost required to have 980Ti SLI.
GPU usage in The Witcher 3 is between 50-70% on primary and 70-85% on secondary. But it's depending on the game.
I'm having weird issues, I only get 5 fps less when I turn SLI off, something is clearly choking me so that's one of the reasons why I want to completely replace everything.
 
Yeah, something is wrong with your configuration for sure.. your usage should be massive. Its not the 3770k though, if that's OC its not your bottleneck. What board do you have? What slots are the cards in? Pic.
 
Voxata said:
Yeah, something is wrong with your configuration for sure.. your usage should be massive. Its not the 3770k though, if that's OC its not your bottleneck. What board do you have? What slots are the cards in? Pic.
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It's Asus Maximus V Extreme.
Here's a photo of the motherboard: http://rog.asus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/maximus-v-extreme-pcie.jpg
First 980Ti is in the first slot (top of the photo) while the second is in the red PCIE slot just below the black one.

Honestly, I have been building my own computers since late 90's. And so far I have only gone AIO water cooling. I feel ashamed that I have not tried custom water cooling yet. This is one of the reasons I want to replace everything.
I want to release the creative nerd in me and build something awesome. But it would be nice to know what the heck is choking my system.
 
I see, I would try the 2nd red slot down after making sure one card isn't running pcie 1.0 4x or something (gpuz during furmark load). I used to go exclusively open loop high end liquid cooling. Nowadays AIO with optional delidding is ALL you need for socket 115x. AIO is also more than capable on the MSI gaming series graphics cards, being as easy as unscrewing and rescrewing only 4 screws on the die! I run a 4.6Ghz OC on my 6700k and 1500 on a 980Ti 6Gaming. I see 40-50c and 60C on CPU/GPU while gaming. With these results, why go open loop? My PC sits on my desk, not in a showroom and I upgrade it often so I want to be able to swap parts easy. I look at liquid cooled 115x builds as a huge waste of money and time in addition to all the loop stuff tanking in resale value. Also with AIO if it leaks and kills hardware NZXT and Corsair pays for a good portion of replacement. This is just me, YMMV, on socket 1366, 2011 and 2011v3 open loops give you big gains in temps and I can justify that for a heavy clocking.
 
Voxata said:
I see, I would try the 2nd red slot down after making sure one card isn't running pcie 1.0 4x or something (gpuz during furmark load). I used to go exclusively open loop high end liquid cooling. Nowadays AIO with optional delidding is ALL you need for socket 115x. AIO is also more than capable on the MSI gaming series graphics cards, being as easy as unscrewing and rescrewing only 4 screws on the die! I run a 4.6Ghz OC on my 6700k and 1500 on a 980Ti 6Gaming. I see 40-50c and 60C on CPU/GPU while gaming. With these results, why go open loop? My PC sits on my desk, not in a showroom and I upgrade it often so I want to be able to swap parts easy. I look at liquid cooled 115x builds as a huge waste of money and time in addition to all the loop stuff tanking in resale value. Also with AIO if it leaks and kills hardware NZXT and Corsair pays for a good portion of replacement. This is just me, YMMV, on socket 1366, 2011 and 2011v3 open loops give you big gains in temps and I can justify that for a heavy clocking.
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It was V-Sync in The Witcher 3 that was ruining my experience. For some reason it was limiting the FPS to 40. After turning it off I get high 90s usage.
Also, I want custom loop because it's custom ;) I can build what I want and make it look like what I want. Like get a 5 meter tube and put a huge ass reservoir in the other room :)
Not that I'm going to do that but yeah, the posibilities are many for us who want to design things.
 
Hey if you've got $$ to burn liquid cooling 115X may be the thing for you! Haha.
 
Depends how long you intend on keeping it.
If you are sensible, you might reduce its life from 20 years to 15 years.
If you go mad you might reduce it to 2 years.
If you are balls out mad you can kill it in weeks or instantly.

I harmed a 2500K by accidentally highly overvolting for 1/2 an hour.
It was already running at max sensible volts and max overclock.
It still overclocks now but by a lot less and is running in my Dads PC.
Thats a 6 year old CPU, highly abused yet still functions perfectly.
 
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Nenu said:
Depends how long you intend on keeping it.
If you are sensible, you might reduce its life from 20 years to 15 years.
If you go mad you might reduce it to 2 years.
If you are balls out mad you can kill it in weeks or instantly.
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In a nutshell, what he said bertkelmer.
 
I have a 6700K on a Maximus VIII Formula board with 2 ram sticks of 8GB GeIL. After using several stresstest apps like LinX, IntelBurnTest V2, AIDA 64, Realbench and 3DMark physics, have settled on adaptive mode 1.31 offset + 0.01. It seemed to be stable using 1.30 but difference seems to be running the ram at (rated) 3000 instead of 2133. There is little data on this GeIL memory so i can't really be sure but when i try it at 3200 it does give an error using LinX.

Anyway i am happy with 4.6Ghz @ 1.31 + 0.01 because temperature peaks at 85C using a H115i AIO. Idle is 23C (throttle). Overclocking it higher would't be good. Also setting LLC from auto to level 6 makes it run hot, like a 10C higher. I can use slightly lower voltage (1.295) but that doesn't make up for the difference.

From what i read sofar 1.31 +0.01 is a good voltage but i think 85C peak stress (70ish intensive gaming) is on the high end considering i am using a 280mm AIO with 4 fans doing push-pull.

Any thoughts and experiences to share and enlighten me?
 
bmg said:
Are you trying to run the cache at the same speed as the core? If so, lock it at 4.2ghz and try again. That was my issue when pushing the overclock higher. As I recall, the cache started being the limiter at around 4.4ghz for me.
Click to expand...

AHHH - thanks for this tip. Er.. well didn't help me. I still need 1.36v with LLC on to keep 4.6ghz stable.

BTW on a gigabyte Z170x the 'cache ratio' is the 'CPU uncore' ratio and it's inside of the "advanced cpu settings" in the cpu frequency section. Even with that set to auto it seems with my cpu core at 46x the uncore was at 40x regardless.

DisparateX said:
I have a 6700K on a Maximus VIII Formula board with 2 ram sticks of 8GB GeIL. After using several stresstest apps like LinX, IntelBurnTest V2, AIDA 64, Realbench and 3DMark physics, have settled on adaptive mode 1.31 offset + 0.01. It seemed to be stable using 1.30 but difference seems to be running the ram at (rated) 3000 instead of 2133. There is little data on this GeIL memory so i can't really be sure but when i try it at 3200 it does give an error using LinX.

Anyway i am happy with 4.6Ghz @ 1.31 + 0.01 because temperature peaks at 85C using a H115i AIO. Idle is 23C (throttle). Overclocking it higher would't be good. Also setting LLC from auto to level 6 makes it run hot, like a 10C higher. I can use slightly lower voltage (1.295) but that doesn't make up for the difference.

From what i read sofar 1.31 +0.01 is a good voltage but i think 85C peak stress (70ish intensive gaming) is on the high end considering i am using a 280mm AIO with 4 fans doing push-pull.

Any thoughts and experiences to share and enlighten me?
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those temps seem high for that cooler and that speed+voltage... Maybe reseat your block?
 
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revenant said:
AHHH - thanks for this tip. Er.. well didn't help me. I still need 1.36v with LLC on to keep 4.6ghz stable.

BTW on a gigabyte Z170x the 'cache ratio' is the 'CPU uncore' ratio and it's inside of the "advanced cpu settings" in the cpu frequency section. Even with that set to auto it seems with my cpu core at 46x the uncore was at 40x regardless.



those temps seem high for that cooler and that speed+voltage... Maybe reseat your block?
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Idle temp is usually 20-24 but also reports 14C so i guess software monitoring is just off.
 
Yeah I am not sure what to trust but RealTemp, CoreTemp, and HWmonitor all say my idle temps are around 20 to 22c (@ 22c ambient) which seems like too cool... My loads with Prime are topping out at 72 max (core0) but usually is in the 50s and 60s @ same ambient. This is with 1.36v @ 4.6ghz. Any lower voltage and I get errors in Prime. This is with a Thermaltake water 3.0 240 with push/pull config. My loads are higher than I expected but I guess these Skylakes just run hot. RealTemp is also reporting that my BLCK is jumping to 104.5 and my core at 4.8 when that happens. I think that has to be some kind of glitch. Zcpu says 4.6 the whole time.
 
revenant said:
Yeah I am not sure what to trust but RealTemp, CoreTemp, and HWmonitor all say my idle temps are around 20 to 22c (@ 22c ambient) which seems like too cool... My loads with Prime are topping out at 72 max (core0) but usually is in the 50s and 60s @ same ambient. This is with 1.36v @ 4.6ghz. Any lower voltage and I get errors in Prime. This is with a Thermaltake water 3.0 240 with push/pull config. My loads are higher than I expected but I guess these Skylakes just run hot. RealTemp is also reporting that my BLCK is jumping to 104.5 and my core at 4.8 when that happens. I think that has to be some kind of glitch. Zcpu says 4.6 the whole time.
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When i disable the Asmedia SATA device in the bios, windows freezes at startup even tho nothing is on those two ports. Just like these temp readings all kinds of weird things happen. It is far from mature this Z170 platform. I guess I have gotten used to the X58 platform.
 
Hmmm... I haven't tried that. But *knocking on wood* I have had a pleasurable experience with this Gigabye Z170x so far... it fired right up, I got windows on it, overclocked it once I got up to speed with the bios, and stressed my OC a bit... it feels pretty solid and fast. My firestrike score kicked my old one right in the twig and berries. 17300 vs 15something.... Gaming feels smoother with the Witcher @ 4k which my x79 struggled with in areas, 6700k vs 3820 @ same clock... Still testing but so far I feel good about the transition.
 
So, I am finally building a new PC after 6 years and haven't kept up with anything. What do I do?


Haswell i7-5820K or Skylake i7-6700k?
 
X99/5820k is probably more future-proof and SLI friendly and loads of PCI-E lanes, esp if you want to run SLI + NVMe m.2 drives.. Z170/6700k seems fairly sturdy and easy to overclock with - don't need to buy as much memory yet mem bw is still very good for gaming. I went with the Z170/6700k combo with the intention of moving that to my every day rig down the road a bit and upgrading the gaming PC again with something 6+ core capable.
 
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I just upgraded from a i2500k ~4.5ghz and 1600mhz ram. This is the first time I've seen my 980ti go to 100%. it was mostly at 99% but never 100%. Playing Witcher 3 and other games with vsync off
 
I got a below average 6700K sample. Running on a Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 TH, it needs about 1.35V in UEFI to pull off 4.5GHz for an hour of Intel XTU. That's with LLC on High and an actual Vcore (CPU-Z) of 1.344 under load.

I ended up setting Vcore to Auto for 4.6GHz and it was able to pass an hour of XTU with Vcore peaking at 1.356 under load. The system fails to boot at 4.7GHz with Auto Vcore though.

I think I'm going ot keep Vcore on Auto for 4.5GHz for daily use. Temps only hit 79C and it's a fairly warm 70+F where I live.
 
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