Broadwell-E Platform
Intel is releasing a 10-core Extreme Edition processor. But is it worth the EXTREME price?
It has been nearly two years since the release of the Haswell-E platform, which began with the launch of the Core i7-5960X processor. Back then, the introduction of an 8-core consumer processor was the primary selling point; along with the new X99 chipset and DDR4 memory support. At the time, I heralded the processor as “easily the fastest consumer processor we have ever had in our hands” and “nearly impossible to beat.” So what has changed over the course of 24 months?
Today Intel is launching Broadwell-E, the follow up to Haswell-E, and things look very much the same as they did before. There are definitely a couple of changes worth noting and discussing, including the move to a 10-core processor option as well as Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, which is significantly more interesting than its marketing name implies. Intel is sticking with the X99 platform (good for users that might want to upgrade), though the cost of these new processors is more than slightly disappointing based on trends elsewhere in the market.
This review of the new Core i7-6950X 10-core Broadwell-E processor is going to be quick, and to the point: what changes, what is the performance, how does it overclock, and what will it cost you?
Go.
The Broadwell-E Architecture
As the name implies, the four processors that Intel is announcing today are part of the Broadwell-E platform, and utilize the same microarchitecture found in the Broadwell family. Desktop users never really got Broadwell parts; even though we included performance results from the Core i7-5775C here on PC Perspective, the part was never widely available, and was released much too close to Skylake to take seriously. Broadwell-E will very likely be more widespread in the DIY market than Broadwell was.
Inherently, there is an architectural disadvantage when going with Broadwell-E, as Skylake is on the market and widely available. Skylake offers improved power efficiency, upgrades and improvements to the integrated graphics, and some IPC enhancements. BDW-E however is a 140 watt CPU family that will surely be used with discrete graphics cards – Skylake’s advantages are less important in this particular market segment.
What is new to the enthusiast platform with BDW-E is a 14nm process technology, as earlier Haswell-E CPUs were built on the 22nm node. In theory this gives us more headroom for performance inside the same 140 watt power envelope. However, it would appear that rather than getting us extra clock speed, the process shift is what is allowing us to increase core count while maintaining competent clock rates.
So what does Broadwell-E offer for consumers? The new Intel Core i7-6900/6800 processor family will be the first to include a 10-core / 20-thread option under the Core brand, though Xeon parts have been available with equal or higher core counts for a while. They will also include as much as 25MB of cache. The addition of Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 is actually the most technically interesting addition to the processor family, promising to tell you which particular core is the “best”, and allowing it to work on single threaded workloads specifically.
The platform remains the same; X99 motherboards with the LGA2011-v3 socket should all be able to run the Core i7-6950X and other BDW-E CPUs with a firmware update. Of course, companies like ASUS and MSI are using this processor launch as a convenient time to update their existing X99 motherboard families with new features, and ASUS sent us the X99-Deluxe II to use in our testing. For users that are running Haswell-E today, this does offer an upgrade path for you to Broadwell-E. Whether or not that is a worthwhile move based on our performance results will be another discussion, but it is good that Intel is extending the lifespan of the platform at all.
Because Intel is sticking with the X99 chipset for Broadwell-E, we do not have any specific changes to talk about on the platform. Intel does mention in its presentation that Thunderbolt 3 is here, and a good match for Broadwell-E, but it will depend on the motherboard vendors to integrate support for it. Based on the new X99 boards I have seen timed with Broadwell-E, most of them do add Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1, and U.2 storage support among other things, so I do expect the X99 boards coming out in 2016 to be better appointed than their 2014 counterparts.
Intel claims that performance increases will exist for both single and multi-threaded workloads. The multi-threaded performance improvements are easy enough to associate with the 10-core processor option, giving us 25% more cores than the Core i7-5960X. Single threaded improvements come courtesy of clock speeds and Turbo Boost Max 3.0 which we will discuss in a bit.
All four processors launching today are fully unlocked and allow for per-core overclocking, AVX specific offset ratios, and VccU voltage controls. More than likely these changes aren’t going to shift how normal overclockers get the job done, but it does give users that have a lot of experience with the art some additional room to stretch the silicon.
Let’s dive through the specs of the parts hitting shelves this summer.
The flagship processor for Broadwell-E is the Core i7-6950X, and it sports some impressive specifications! A base clock speed of 3.0 GHz along with a Boost clock speed of up to 3.5 GHz is paired with 10 cores to offer unseen multi-threading performance for a consumer branded processor. Obviously HyperThreading is in play so the CPU will actually address 20 threads in your system – and just looking at Windows Task Manager in that configuration is awesome. That CPU will have 25MB of cache, 40 lanes of PCI Express 3.0, quad-channel DDR4 memory support, and a price tag of $1723.
Wait, what?? $1700?!?
Intel has taken a different route with the Broadwell-E release than with the previous one. Every time Intel has increased core count on their Extreme Edition processors in the past, the new higher-core part was the flagship priced at $1000 or so. When Haswell-E brought us 8-core parts, it had a tray price of $1049. For whatever reason Intel is going back on that trend, keeping the 8-core processor option at $1089, but adding 58% to your price for 25% more cores. It changes the whole dynamic of the platform, honestly.
Looking past the Core i7-6950X to the other parts, Intel has an 8-core and two 6-core processors. The 8-core Core i7-6900K runs 200 MHz faster than the 6950X, drops a bit of cache (to 20MB) but maintains the same capabilities otherwise. Only the Core i7-6800 sees a drop in PCIe lanes – down to the same 28 lanes that the Core i7-5820K offered but with a price tag of just $434.
Too expensive compared to
Too expensive compared to xeons of same price range.
At soviet Intel, chip buys
At soviet Intel, chip buys you!
Precisely, comrade!
Precisely, comrade!
the top frequency bin 10c
the top frequency bin 10c xeon from last gen went for over $2000…
yeah but it is a xeon, has
yeah but it is a xeon, has xeon features.
I would get the xeon counterpart over this i7, because of price.
would love to see a direct comparison between the xeon mentioned in this review and the i7 even overclocking!
The workstation-y E5-2687W V4
The workstation-y E5-2687W V4 is only around ~$420 more and has 12 cores, ECC and dual socket support. Clocked decently high too. 3GHz base, 3.5GHz turbo.
Huge disappointment, now I
Huge disappointment, now I know why intel laid off so many people, the profit per performance metrics just dried up on it. I would not be surprised if the next tic or toc was under 15% improvement on performance. Sure most people just are not buying new pc’s all the time now but this will not even get people who need xeons to be tempted to try it.
That price is just
That price is just depressing.
Whinning at at 1700$ CPU
Whinning at at 1700$ CPU after playing with yourselves on a 700$ mid range graphic card.
I guess intel saw that every nvidia price hike was welcomed by the “objective tech sites” and decided to apply the same multiplier to its own prices.
560Ti (250€) –> 680 (450€) –> 980 (550€) –> 1080 (790€)
All Hail nvidia ! They’re so good I’m happy to give them money !
990X (1000€) –> 3970X (1000€) –> 4960X (1000€) –> 5960X (1000€) –> 6950X (1800€)
Greedy Intel !
lol comparing $700 to $1700
lol comparing $700 to $1700 for a component
Why are you comparing a 560Ti
Why are you comparing a 560Ti to a 680. where is the 580? and 780?
This is more a curiosity as I generally agree with what you have said.
Still, performance per Watt, Nivida had AMD beat. Intel simply due to is near monopoly (and hole P4 fiasco forcing companies to either get only Intel or loose major discounts – then settling with AMD out of court for 1.4billion) is doing every one a disservice.
I’m hoping Zen will bring AMD on par with current Intel desktop offerings (6700), then intel will finally have to adjust it “fair” prices.
on GPU front, AMD is simply aiming low for the mid range to get more market share. Hope they succed.
My 290x seems to by dying, which is kind of good. Would gladly upgrade to 480x when it comes out. Though the 1070 does look delicious…
It’s completely reasonable to
It’s completely reasonable to compare a 560 Ti to a 680 and 980 when it’s in the succession of upper-mid-range chips: Gx104. The 580 and 780 are larger chips in the Gx100 class. The Gx104 chips are around 300-400 mm^2 in size and the Gx100 chips are 500-600 mm^2. Since the smaller chips yield better and more fit on a wafer, they ought to be cheaper.
Here’s the midrange chip succession of the past few generations:
GF114 — GTX 560 Ti — 360 mm^2 — 40nm process
GK104 — GTX 680 — 294 mm^2 — 28nm
GM104 — GTX 980 — 398 mm^2 — 28nm
GP104 — GTX 1080 — 314 mm^2 — 16nm
Except you’re completely
Except you’re completely ignoring the cost of moving to a new fabrication size… The jump from 40>28nm required an initial price increase, and AMD did the same. 20nm never matured so we stayed on 28nm and prices only increase a bit as the chip sizes grew massive.
14/16nm is still not great yields for GPUs, even small ones, so the price is needed. You also don’t seem to understand that price is based on PERFORMANCE, not based on physical aspects, if AMD and Nvidia only sold their chips based on physical costs, their previous line of chips would instantly become obsolete and no longer sell.
The 1080 gives you twice the performance of a 980 for a small bump in price. If you think that’s a rip off, you’re pretty crazy.
The 1080 is 580€, why are you
The 1080 is 580€, why are you intentionally lying about the price?
And the 980 launched at 493€.
I think the vishera
I think the vishera perf/dollar really highlights the difficulties of current gen Intel. Money is required to push barriers which is incredibly difficult to find on a shrinking market.
Crasy at the moment!
Now you
Crasy at the moment!
Now you see what AMD’s failure has done.
God knows what intel will do when AMD finely goes.
(Polaris failure may be what sends AMD over the edge.)
It seems Intel is intent on biting the hand that feeds it too.
What next?
prices are dictated by market
prices are dictated by market demand. Even monopolies are susceptible to microeconomics. There is an optimal price to selling every product imaginable based on the cost of production and the demand of that product which produces the most total profit for the producer and seller. The truth is those in need of a 10-core processor are very few and have money in the first place. The 6-core options are still good with a very solid price relative to the 4-core I7s.
Intel’s prices for other products won’t be going anywhere even if AMD does fully die out. Otherwise they’d have moved significantly by now.
Typical corporate thinking.
Typical corporate thinking. As a de facto monopoly Intel can do whatever they like. ‘Don’t like it – GTFO!’ I bet that this particular credo is somewhere on the wall inside one of many Intel buildings.
At this moment in time I think even most intelish fanboiz crossing fingers for AMD to deliver something worthwhile with Zen.
Give me a break. 1700$ for a consumer CPU which is just binned Xeon with raised clock? You have to be daft to infinity. To be honest I considered 1400-1500$ a reasonably decent value for 20 threads, but this. LOL Intel outdid themselves, making something far more expensive that infamous Skulltrail Fail.
Comparing Intel prices and nVidia is not even apples to oranges. 980 is trounced by 1080. 6950K does not offer twice and a bit performance boost over previous CPU king.
Nope, that’s just niche
Nope, that’s just niche supply and niche demand from a very wealthy market segment. Intel builds the products best suited to target markets. That’s the main reason it is such a successful business. Intel is not a charity and nor is it being ludicrous with pricing. Extreme processors aren’t meant to be at mainstream prices. They are meant to be sold to the very wealthy ultra enthusiasts. Get the 6850K or the 6800K if you want to be cheap.
Sure makes that $1000 8-core
Sure makes that $1000 8-core version look reasonable!
Well, maybe not. 😀
So basically it’s the cpu
So basically it’s the cpu equivalent of the Titan.
You could replace every
You could replace every reference to this CPU with the GTX 1080, and the conclusion would still be true.
At least this pricing gives AMD’s Zen some room to breathe. 8 core Zen won’t need to worry about competing with this chip; as long as it’s vaguely competitive with Intel’s 8 cores, AMD can make some money.
Since oil kings lost their
Since oil kings lost their dollars, AMD lacks cash to develop good products… so for now AMD cheerleaders should better invest in vaseline to be prepared to the Zen attitude. :o)
The 1080 is $600, it’s twice
The 1080 is $600, it’s twice the performance of a 980, which is around $550 right now and has HALF THE RAM, and not even GDDR5X. People really need to start understanding math better.
Remember when, 2600k?
Remember when, 2600k?
The 2600k is what I’m still
The 2600k is what I’m still rocking!
Lol i couldn’t believe when
Lol i couldn’t believe when it was rumored to be $1500 but lol 1700 that is $700 for 2 cores peoples 😛
I’m surprised that Blender
I’m surprised that Blender was not tested for rendering.
Still looking at the general rendering performance, especially Cinebench on this and other sides, makes me drool.
A dual socket E5-2670 with 8core with HT each. So in total 16 core/32 thread system performs on par with overclocked 6950x with 10 core/20 thread.
Though for the price of one 6950 you can get 2 of the e5-2670 systems..
Still hoping to see more rendering benchmarks (hoping for blender, but that is selfish a bit :))
Let’s hope that more of the
Let’s hope that more of the Blender workloads have shifted to being done on the GPU, what with AMD’s GCN GPUs getting cycles rendering support along with Nvidia(had Cycles support for a long time), the GPU has way more cores than any CPU, including the Xeon Phi! I’ll bet that future GPUs will be getting more CPU types of functionality so the need for any powerful/budget busting CPUs like the 6590X will not be needed for any rendering workloads. Just look at AMD’s FireRender/FireRays 2.0 open sourcing of the software/SDK libraries for ray tracing accelerated on the GPU, so maybe there will be some Blender Plug-ins for FireRays 2.0! All this fuss about some paltry 10 cores on a CPU when the GPU has hundreds/thousands of cores.
Wait for Polaris/Vega and see just how much more async-compute features that “GCN 4/GCN 1.3” is going to have. The software/driver stacks are going to need some time to catch up to all the hardware and graphics API changes for GPUs, and how the Vulkan API is going to figure into the Blender workflow pipeline in the future is still very much an unanswered question. OpenGL is still getting support for the graphics software API to utilize, but that may all change with some OpenGL to Vulkan wrapper code and software tool chains/conversion layers to allow for developers of packages like Blender/others to seamlessly port their software over to the Vulkan API over time. Both Vulkan and OpenCL use SPIR-V, so more acceleration of the ray tracing workloads will be done on the GPU and not dependent on any costly CPU SKUs as much for ray tracing workloads.
What you really want to see
What you really want to see is some of AMD’s HPC/Workstation APUs on an Interposer and the HBM2 memory getting the JEDEC standard 1024 bit wide traces/channels per HBM2 stack to maybe even 6 stacks of HBM2 Memory! And that includes a big fat Vega GPU on the interposer package, wired up to the 16/32 Zen cores with some very wide CPU/cores die to GPU die interposer etched interconnect fabric that will put any PCI/NvLink technology into the dark ages by comparison! That is before the Zen/Navi based APUs on an interposer arrive and raise the bar even higher for rendering workloads. Those standard Quad channel DIMMS are still nowhere compared to the amount of raw effective bandwidth of HBM, and when HBM2 arrives that raw effective bandwidth will double, and the HBM2 stacks will get up to 8GBs of memory per stack.
Intel will never be able to offer the GPU power of AMD, or Nvidia, for those workstation rendering workloads done on a big fat GPU. And with AMD putting a Vega GPU on the interposer module with some Zen cores and HBM2, well that’s going to be a rendering beast that no old fashioned CPU to GPU over narrow PCIe connection will match.
Because Blender isn’t an
Because Blender isn’t an industry standard, very few CG professionals will touch Blender because of how much it tries to be different for the sake of being different instead of for the sake of good workflow. It also doesn’t have as proper and large of a development team behind it and lacks a lot of fine tuned capability the industry likes.
Redshift is becoming king of the hill when it comes to GPU rendering right now, would have been good to see a bench for that.
It’s…not very good (for
It’s…not very good (for that money, that is).
Like missiles it cost a lot
Like missiles it cost a lot but can destroy your enemies!
That’s too much to achieve a man on the floor (AMD).
Its who fault that they aint
Its who fault that they aint making profit when they try to milk the market for the past 5 years. And now they want to try even more. You probably need to laid even more staff.
Well done. I hope u laid more ppl and lay waste to yourself Intel.
Intel’s profits are higher
Intel’s profits are higher than ever, and this isn’t milking the market. It’s segmenting the upper crust of enthusiasts. The extreme processors have always gone to the wealthiest enthusiasts who will try to set records on anything.
When AMD was competitive, it sold $1000, $1200, and even $1500 extreme processors too.
Intel makes way more money
Intel makes way more money gimping down the core i7s to some UltraBook UltraCrap U/M series SKUs and selling the i7 name. And Intel gets more of those dual core i7 U/M castrated SKUs per wafer than any of its quad core variants, but still charges more for the dual core i7 variants to all the UltraBook fools out there that have bought into that Apple influenced thin and light laptop cult mantra.
What an Intel scam of scams is that Intel financed Ultrabook initiative, and the fools that will pay even more per CPU core than on any other consumer market segment of Intel SKUs. Intel has made billions selling those dual core i7s U/M series SKUs, and the supply chains are choked with those Ultrabook SKUs shoved into poorly ventilated and crappy laptop cases and sold at the highest margins possible for such a crappy and underpowered class of Laptop SKUs. On top of that Intel serves up its dog food brand of integrated graphics, and only reserves its top pedigree dog food graphics for its most costly SKUs, netting Intel even more billions from the fools that think they are getting something other than a load of overpriced SOC dog food.
The only metric Intel has going for is its single CPU core IPC metric, and the only reason gamers want some of Intel’s CPU only SKUs is that they can get the CPU cores without eating any of that Intel Graphics dog food. So Intel will continue to stick it to its CPU cores only Gaming/enthusiast customers, much the same way that Nvidia can to its GPU customers.
With the newer gaming APIs able to do more multicore load sharing across the CPU’s cores, and even more so, move a lot more of the Gaming compute/gaming graphics fully onto the GPU, Intel will still be trying to push the single core IPC metric in order to get the fool’s money. Zen is coming, and if Zen can even approach the Haswell level of single core IPC performance at AMD’s more affordable price point then those high margin Intel CPU days are coming to an end. Any Zen based APUs will not be coming with any overpriced dog food integrated graphics, they will be coming with AMD’s latest GCN graphics and be a much better price/performance choice with way more asynchronous compute ability in their GPU ACE units.
$1700.00+ dollars for 10 cores, LOL the fools that will fall for that are going to be very angry in the very short time up until Zen is on the market and that $1700.00+ investment looks so bad in comparison to what the market will be charging, once those 8 core ZENs start to show up on NewEgg/other outlets’ supply chains.
That, my friend, was a
That, my friend, was a high-quality rant. Nice!
But, seriously, tell us how you REALLY feel…
Heh heh.
It is time for nVidia to make
It is time for nVidia to make an offer on AMD processor business…
Face it. It’s time to upgrade
Face it. It’s time to upgrade your version of Handbrake. Those results are totally irrelevant.
These Broadwell-E prices are
These Broadwell-E prices are ridiculous. Even Nvidia only reaches this level of rapacity with their Titan cards. Intel is displaying increasingly monopolistic behaviour with both high-end consumer CPUs and datacentre parts. But they have failed to provide a viable answer to the approaching all-out assault from ARM based products. That’s where Intel’s real competition will come from in the future, and they seem unlikely to be able to meet it.
typo/copypasta error on the
typo/copypasta error on the OC results page?
Handbrake
Stock: 2551.23
4.3 GHz: 338.89 FPS
14% increase
It’s like those medicine that
It’s like those medicine that really cost $30 being sold for $850. It has nothing to do with supply and demand or expertise. The price is the result of corporate bozo’s just trying to see how far they can go till it hits the barrier of negativity.
When people and corporations massively stop paying these prices and publicly give them the finger things might change.
Nobody forces you to buy
Nobody forces you to buy overpriced products…
So deal with it, it is a free market!
Currently with the slowing world economy Intel prefers to rise their margins instead volumes. It is a wise strategy since AMD is near from bankruptcy.
I have to say the amount of
I have to say the amount of info and content out there for the other new Broadwell-E CPUs is pathetic. How long have reviewers had these CPUs to test? Or did they not all get the full line up to test?
Or are reviewers as bored as most people with this new launch?
It seems like Haswell-E clocks better and has better temps overall.
Intel only sampled the
Intel only sampled the flagship.