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CPU-Wafer1

Intel's Skylake is officially debuting today, just months subsequently the company launched new loftier-stop desktop Broadwell chips. Information technology's been more than two years since Intel launched a new desktop architecture, and over a year since the company's Haswell refresh, the Core i7-4790K, debuted every bit a high-stop enthusiast bit. The new Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K are meant to replace the erstwhile CPUs, with new integrated graphics, new chipset support, and an all-new core architecture.

Consummate details on that cadre architecture will have to look until IDF August 18th, minus what we tin can glean from early chip tests. Intel isn't sharing much in-depth detail on the chips today. For now, nosotros'll encompass some initial results and talk over the platform and its positioning within Intel's lineup.

The route to Skylake

The ii new Skylake fries debuting today are the vanguard of a full suite of sixth-generation processors coming later this year. Intel hasn't yet described how it volition launch the comprehensive hardware refresh, but given how recently Broadwell debuted in some markets, nosotros would presume that Intel will push Skylake out on a similar cadence. That way Broadwell has enough time in market place to move inventory and the company doesn't end up stuck with fries information technology tin't sell.

Intel'south entire strategy effectually Skylake has been a little strange. When the company announced that Broadwell would launch up to a year late in some market segments, we assumed this would accept an impact on Skylake's launch schedule equally well. It merely made sense that Intel would hold its cadence timer steady, rather than rushing out a new launch on the heels of the erstwhile one. Instead, Intel did exactly that, opting to replace the older Haswell desktop parts rather than exercise a top-to-bottom refresh based on Broadwell.

At the time, this may have made sense, merely it introduced an odd hiccup into Intel's roadmap. The company recently announced that its 10nm ramp would be delayed past roughly a year, with a new interim product, Kaby Lake, brought forward to serve in the interim. The just thing Intel has done with the 10nm ramp is formalize the delay that characterized Broadwell rather than informing investors that it would happen mere months in advance, but the business firm could've avoided the need for Kaby Lake if information technology had simply kept Skylake in the oven for a bit longer.

Either manner, we're here now — with the get-go new Intel architecture to debut in over two years. Skylake is the follow-upwards to Broadwell, which makes it a "tock" in Intel's nomenclature. The new chip is too built on 14nm, but different Haswell, it uses a new socket, LGA1151. Forth with a new core and socket comes a new motherboard chipset, the Z170.

Z170 Chipset

As initial leaks suggested, the new Z170 chipset makes a number of modest improvements to Intel's previous high-end Z97. GPU PCIe 3.0 connectivity is the aforementioned, but the total number of USB 3.0 ports has increased to 10, up from 6. Total USB 3.0 ports in total is still 14, though this would seem to address the needs of all but the nigh crazed USB 3.0 users in general. The major chipset change is the use of DMI three.0, up from 2.0. This means available point-to-bespeak bandwidth has leapt from 20Gbit/s (PCIe 2.0, essentially) up to 8GT/s (or 8GB/southward). That's a huge bandwidth jump for Intel'south signal-to-point interconnect, and it's how the chipset can feed the 20 lanes of PCIe 3.0 connectivity that the Z170 provides.

Skylake features

There are several new features to discuss regarding the combined chipset + CPU platform. Kickoff, Intel is offer full base clock overclocking again for the first time in years. Previously, overclocking via bus speed has been extremely limited on Sandy Bridge platforms or above. While Intel added back up for multiples of the FSB, it typically merely offered them in set ratios. Now, gamers and enthusiasts volition be able to hand-tune processors to a much finer degree than was previously available.

Skylake Features

The other theoretical reward is the back up of high-end DDR4, up to and including DDR4-4133. The reason we say "theoretically" in this case, even so, is because the overwhelming bulk of consumer workloads are latency limited, non bandwidth limited — and DDR4 latency is sufficiently high compared with DDR3 that the gains are going to be modest. The highest-end DDR4 on the market, DDR4-3400, is timed at 16-18-18-36. High-quality DDR3-2133, in contrast, is timed at eight-10-10-27. DDR4-3400 is clocked 1.6x higher than DDR3-2133, simply its listed latency figures are too i.6x higher. (Actual latency calculations are more than complicated than this, so care for these comparisons strictly as a ballpark estimate.)

Relative RAM latency

Relative RAM latency

This is why next-generation RAM standards take so much time to offer physical overall performance gains compared to previous-gen counterparts. Strictly in terms of latency, the latest modern DRAM standards struggle to move much past DDR-400 with 2-two-2-5 latency. That doesn't hateful DDR4 is bad, of course, just don't wait to a new memory standard to offering much in the fashion of boosted operation.

The Cadre i7-6700K and Cadre i5-6600K

Intel is formally announcing two cores today — the Core i7-6700K and the Cadre i5-6600K. Both chips back up either DDR4 or DDR3L, with peak speeds upward to DDR4-2133 and DDR3L-1600 officially. Nosotros've already had our board up to 2667MHz, so clearly in that location's more headroom on the hardware than the official standard. Each chip is designed to fit within the Core i7 vs. Core i5 paradigm that we discussed a few weeks ago; the Core i7-6700K has four cores and eight threads for $350, while the Core i5-6600K is a four-core, four-thread flake with a 6MB L3. That said, neither bit is a stand-out leader in terms of raw clock speed — Intel'southward Cadre i7-4790K runs at 4GHz with a boost clock of iv.4GHz, while the Core i5-4690K has the aforementioned clock speeds equally the Core i5-6600K.

6700K6600K

This is probably why Intel kept its predictions of operation gains relatively restrained, with a stated "upward to 10%" improvement for a 1-twelvemonth-onetime PC. Intel is claiming roughly 10% a year, meaning that Skylake should be 10% faster than final year'south Devil'southward Canyon, 20% faster than the Core i7-4770K, and 30% faster than the older Core i7-3770K, aka Ivy Bridge. I'g however working on finalizing our review (I've been mostly focused on Windows 10), but here's a bit of a taste of what Skylake offers in terms of performance.

I've included two test results below, merely just 1 of them has a full suite of comparison figures. The x265 test is new, and the just system I had immediately at paw to test against was my ain Core i7-3960X. Still, we see some intriguing performance figures from simply these benchmarks:

x264

I want to talk almost the older H.264 criterion outset, since we've got a healthy prepare of operation data to cull from hither. Note that the Core i7-6700K, shown in bluish, is actually faster than the six-cadre Core i7-3960X in the start pass and inside ii.5% of it in the second. That's surprising considering we rarely quad-cadre chips beating past half-dozen-core processors, fifty-fifty when the six-cores are from an earlier generation. The 6700K does have a clock speed advantage over the Cadre i7-3960X, however, since the latter chip tops out at three.9GHz turbo, compared to 4.2GHz for the 6700K. That 6% clock speed improvement explains some of the Cadre i7-6700K's performance improvement against the Core i7-4770K, but past no means all of it. Skylake is faster than Haswell past a substantial margin, at least in x264 encoding.

Intel's newer six and 8-cadre chips still beat the Core i7-6700K, but the gap is narrower than one might expect.

Finally, in the newer x265 encode test, we've only got two points of reference — the Core i7-6700K and the Core i7-3960X.

x265

This is a new test that I decided to include out of curiosity, and we haven't checked it thoroughly for threading and other capabilities. Even and then, it shows a formidable functioning gain for the Core i7-6700K. Skylake wins past Sandy Bridge-Eastward past 30% — a huge gain, particularly for a quad-core processor.

We're working on a full review of Skylake and looking forwards to IDF when Intel will shed more than calorie-free on the architecture of the CPU. Based on what we've seen thus far, notwithstanding, this is ane solid chip.