Power Consumption, Perf per Dollar, Closing Thoughts
Power Consumption Testing
Idle power consumption is quite good on the new Z170 chipset motherboard and Skylake processor, measuring at just 58 watts. Under a full load, the 6700K system pulls a total of 143.8 watts (full system, not the CPU alone), which is actually 12 watts less than the Core i7-4790K based system. Considering the move to 14nm process technology as well as the new (yet to be revealed) architectural changes, this seems right in line with expectations.
Performance per Dollar
One thing we wanted to take into consideration with this review is the idea of performance per dollar. To get some interesting data I selected three benchmarks (7zip, Cinebench 11 and x264 v5.0) and included current pricing from Newegg.com (or Amazon if out of stock on Newegg).
At $350, the Core i7-6700K is priced right in line with previous Intel mainstream CPU releases including the Core i7-4770K, 4790K and 3770K. It's obvious that those Extreme Edition processors have a hell of a hill to climb with their $1000+ price tags.
Of all the Intel processors in this test, the Core i7-6700K has the highest performance per dollar, beating out the 4790K and the Haswell-E based Core i7-5960X as well. AMD's FX-8350 does very well here in these results thanks to its extreme low price, so users that are primarily concerned with this metric, but know the limitations of that platform in other areas, should definitely give AMD's parts a look.
Pricing and Availability
Today marks the launch of Skylake but only for the these two specific processors we are discussing today: the Core i7-6700K and the Core i5-6600K. Intel claims that both of these processors will be widely available this week, and we have heard from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, all three of which have plenty of motherboards based on the Z170 chipset ready to go.
The wider array of Skylake parts, including lower-cost desktop solutions, C-SKUs and mobile processors will be revealed at a future date, with more information likely coming through during IDF next week. It's great to see Intel giving at least a slight nod to the gamers and enthusiasts that really power and push this industry forward.
Closing Thoughts
I think it's safe to say that, although Skylake's performance isn't going to make Haswell users jump out of their seats to order immediately, consumer that are on Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge might finally have a line in the sand to step across. The Core i7-6700K is an incredibly fast desktop processor that will be able to handle your gaming, media encoding and web browsing with incredible efficiency and at nearly the same performance level as those $1000+ processor still taunting us with their 8-core setups. The CPU is unlocked, overclockable and easy on the wallet (in the grand scheme of things).
I think it might be the new Z170 chipset that is the icing on the cake to tease the sweet tooth of more users than either Z97 or Z87 was able to in recent history. The upgrade to DMI3 and 20x lanes of PCIe 3.0 on the chipset mean that motherboard vendors can offer up some fairly interesting and unique combinations of features including high speed wireless, USB 3.1, Thunderbolt, M.2 and U.2 storage and more. The ASUS Z170-Deluxe is an amazing example of a flagship board that offers up enough useful (that's the key) features to warrant the added cost over the more basic motherboards. If you are on a tighter budget, the Z170-A from ASUS looks like a great option down that road. We have already seen leaks of other vendors with boards support 7 (!!) PCIe SSDs, so clearly we aren't the only ones thinking outside the box here.
As an enthusiast, I am excited for what Skylake brings to the table. And yes, we might finally have a part that gets those Nehalem and Sandy Bridge users off their butts and into the upgrade line.
looks better!
looks better!
Every reviewer keeps downing
Every reviewer keeps downing on the integrated graphics, but according to the linked article, DirectX 12 will utilize the integrated along with the discrete. They say it will be like having another graphics card…
http://time.com/3975043/windows-10-microsoft-gamers/
‘How many video cards do you have in your PC? Think carefully (I didn’t, and told Wardell, who asked me the same question, just one). Wardell reminded me most modern PCs have at least two (not counting extremely high-end systems with cards run in tandem, in which case the number would be three or more).
“Everyone forgets about the integrated graphics card on the motherboard that you’d never use for gaming if you have a dedicated video card,” says Wardell. “With DirectX 12, you can fold in that integrated card as a seamless coprocessor. The game doesn’t have to do anything special, save support DirectX 12 and have that feature enabled. As a developer I don’t have to figure out which thing goes to what card, I just turn it on and DirectX 12 takes care of it.”
Wardell notes the performance boost from pulling in the integrated video card is going to be heavily dependent on the specific combination—the performance gap between integrated video cards over the past half-decade isn’t small—but at the high end, he says it could be as significant as DirectX 12’s ability to tap the idle cores in your CPU. Add the one on top of the other and, if he’s right, the shift at a developmental level starts to sound like that rare confluence of evolutionary plus the letter ‘r’.’
What’s in this new CPU for
What’s in this new CPU for video editors?
Dude, upgrade your Handbrake
Dude, upgrade your Handbrake software. The new version is way better optimized for 4+ core setups.
Also, how come nobody is comparing the 6700K to the 5820K? I’d rather pay a little more and get 6 cores instead of 4.
if review sites compare 5820K
if review sites compare 5820K with 6700K no one will buy the 6700K.
Looking forward to the next
Looking forward to the next I7 WITHOUT integrated GPU… 🙂 CMonnnn Intel !
Lol I’ll just stick with this
Lol I’ll just stick with this Phenom II x6 for another year. Someone get back to me when CPU performance has increased by an order of magnitude (aka when Intel gets real competition again).
I hope PC gamers do not get
I hope PC gamers do not get these CPUs. I don’t want to see people waste money on this platform if you are in the market for building a gaming PC. The cost of DDR4 right now is just stupid expensive and motherboards for this are expensive. There are no incredible gains with either and you’d save a ton of money going with a 4790k or something similar on LGA 1150.
Except if you actually look
Except if you actually look at prices, DDR4-2400 4GB sticks are cheaper than their DDR3 counterparts. $30 vs $33
I’m one of the people hanging
I’m one of the people hanging grimly on to my old X58 platforms, of which I have two on ASUS P6T motherboards.
I’m in no rush to upgrade GPU from a pair of GTX680’s in SLI, and no rush for faster HDD with 2x 240GB in Raid, so the question I have is, is it REALLY worth Dropping $2k to upgrade a motherboard / ram / cpu / psu.
Last year, for AUS$100 each, I replaced my i7-920 parts with Xeon hexacore units, which at 4ghz / 6 thread+HT (12 thread) seem to do fine.
If I look at the IPC@3.5ghz above, and reckon that a new 6700K part will be a full 1/3rd faster per core, it strikes me that I’m only behind on single core performance with even such an old setup! 6 cores at 1.0 each vs 4 cores at 1.33 each for example, even if I’m generous and say a 6700K perfoms 1.5x per core of the Xeon, I’m still packing the same processing punch.
Is that a fair assessment, or am I missing something? –
What I’m really asking is, if you have an old X58 platform – and aren’t aiming for quad-sli or something requiring more pcie lanes than you have, isn’t a $100 i7 to Xeon upgrade going to be enough to keep you in the game?
Is the IPC increase on a quad core worth the $2000 price tag, because I suspect you wouldn’t notice the difference much!
I tend to play slightly older games, just finished mass effect series and bioshock for example, so I suspect the very latest titles would give issues to my setup, so I know it’s adequate for me as I never see the CPU taxed much.
Buying chipsets with crappy
Buying chipsets with crappy on-board gpu’s will encourage them to make more and the fact is that the speed is topping out because of the limitations of wave speed through the material the chips are made of, bus speed of external gpu’s and the limits of the expanion slots speed are the real limits still left, that and doing all the binary physics and mathing out the hardware to function 3-dimensionally and running the signal to and from an expansion slot takes time.