Integrated Graphics Performance: Skylake, Broadwell, Haswell, Kaveri
Even though we don't know the execution unit count, or any other architectural shifts about the Intel HD 530 graphics that is new on Skylake, we CAN test performance. Our integrated graphics testing will compare Skylake, Broadwell (with the Iris Pro 6200 and its eDRAM), Haswell and AMD's Kaveri architectures.
First up we'll run through the 3DMark Cloud Gate and Fire Strike tests and then jump into a few games as well.
The Core i7-6700K is about 25% faster in our graphics results than Haswell, and it is able to bypass the AMD Kaveri APU as well by a small (3%) margin. Considering the once dominant lead that AMD had on the integrated graphics front, this is a major step for Intel. Yes, of course we found that Broadwell and the Iris Pro implementation take the lead here with its 128MB of eDRAM.
The move to the 3DMark Fire Strike test puts AMD back in the driver's seat with Kaveri over Skylake, though Broadwell is still leading by 8% or so.
Keep in mind, that even though AMD's A10-7850K is a 95 watt TDP part, right in line with Skylake and Haswell (but 30 watts higher than Broadwell), it is priced significantly lower than any of these processors from Intel. At $130, the Kaveri APU is less than half the price of the Core i7-6700K, i7-5775C and i7-4790K.
Now for some real world games. Bioshock Infinite plays at nearly 30 FPS on Skylake at 1080p, which is 48% faster than Haswell and nearly on par with Kaveri. Broadwell still dominates here with an average frame rate of 49.1, which is 64% higher than our first Skylake sample.
In GRID 2, the Core i7-6700K is able to push over 30 FPS at 1080p, and it is 28% faster than the Core i7-4790K with Haswell. AMD's A10-7850K is 21% faster than Skylake, though all once again fall to the power of Broadwell integrated graphics solution.
Our last game test, Metro: Last Light, is another win for Skylake, besting Haswell by more than 50% and 14% faster than the AMD Kaveri-based APU. Yes, the Core i7-5775C with Broadwell is still the outright winner, but consider the 6700K's lack of eDRAM, this is a solid result for Intel's new architecture.
I fully expect that we will see C-based SKUs for Intel's Skylake processors sometime this year, enabling another level of IGP performance improvement over even what Broadwell and Iris Pro 6200 offer today. For the Core i7-6700K, these IGP results will mean very little in terms of sales: very few users are picking up this CPU to install in a PC without a discrete graphics card in tow.
For those of you interested in how the Core i7-6700K Skylake processor performs with a discrete GPU in tow, and if SLI/multi-GPU scaling is improved in anyway, be sure to check out my other launch story that focuses on that angle.
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.