Skylake is here

[Artorius]

Even dual channel is almost irrelevant at DDR3/4 speeds...

[Hellfury]

All benchmarks I saw put Quad channel configs almost in the same league as the dual channel ones...

Seems what matter is the memory frequency

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...postcount=2766

[Vash The Stampede]

probably because they know that not a lot of gamers will use the onboard GPU and most of the testers are looking at overclocking the CPU as much as possible and if you use the iGPU that totally gimps overclocking as the heat output rises considerably

Skylake doesn't have Iris Pro graphics, that's Broadwell. But still the CPU should be reviewed more properly than herp derp gaming benchmarks with discrete GPU. Especially because the only big difference between Haswell and Skylake is the GPU. Some people might want Skylake or Broadwell for HTPC purposes for light gaming.

[mrgreenthump]

Skylake doesn't have Iris Pro graphics, that's Broadwell. But still the CPU should be reviewed more properly than herp derp gaming benchmarks with discrete GPU. Especially because the only big difference between Haswell and Skylake is the GPU. Some people might want Skylake or Broadwell for HTPC purposes for light gaming.

Tomshardware did test the in die GPU. So there are all kinds of reviews to be found.. The biggest thing was/is, that the reviewers got less than a week to get their review done if they wanted to release the story on launch date. There will be loads more reviews coming, just those who actually test everything take more time or as some are doing, release them in parts.

[fixx]

TTL also tested the iGPU of Skylake vs Broadwell vs i7-4790K, link in the very first post of this thread.

In tests that hit GPU hard Broadwell is about twice as fast as Skylake, and Skylake is about 30% faster than previous gen iGPU in i7-4790K.
In tests that use both CPU/GPU the difference between Broadwell and Skywell is "only" about 50% and not 100%.

[Vash The Stampede]

Tomshardware did test the in die GPU. So there are all kinds of reviews to be found.. The biggest thing was/is, that the reviewers got less than a week to get their review done if they wanted to release the story on launch date. There will be loads more reviews coming, just those who actually test everything take more time or as some are doing, release them in parts.

Tomshardware was the one I linked. That and Anantech are the only two I've found, and not very well covered. The reason I consider the iGPU to be very important is because I anticipate that AMD and Intel will soon begin the APU wars. More important for laptop owners than desktops cause a cheap $100 graphics card from AMD or Nvidia will out do most iGPU graphics. But for laptops a discrete GPU is usually found in the super expensive laptops that get so hot that you'll go sterile from having it on your lap for more than 30 minutes.

If you still own a desktop Sandy Bridge there's no reason to upgrade yet. If you own a laptop Sandy Bridge, the graphics alone are enough to upgrade to Skylake. But this means that AMD has to do something to stay competitive soon, and that means much better graphics. We'll see how Carrizo does when released. I believe that Intel may release a variant of Skylake with Iris Pro Graphics in the future.

[skatblast]

I like buying fancy new tech but ill just get a watercooler and clock the snot out of my 4790k for years to come after this disappointment

[RedTGP]

Id like to see where there is a review specifically for World of Warcraft showing how a Broadwell with l4 cache is so much faster when using a separate discrete video card - IE Geforce 570 (what I have). I'm particularly interested since I have a 4.9 Ghz 2500k - would love to upgrade but even a 6700k doesn't seem like it will be much faster than what I have now even overclocked to 4.6-4.7 ghz. And the cost is significant - MB, processor, DDR4 RAM, all new cooler capable of the heat at 4.7 is $800+. I don't do video editing - just web surfing, SSH, email and WOW. My Geforce 570 is overclocked to 580 performance levels I run 2560x1440 now at a full 60 fps even in raids.

[Vash The Stampede]

WoW won't benefit from Skylake at all. WoW needs to make better use of multiple cores to get faster. The problem is that when retailers run out of Haswell's then you have no choice but to buy Skylake. It's the same situation with AMD's new R9 390 graphic cards. Yea it's newer and shiny but the 290X does the job equally well for $100 less. The 6600K is going for $280 and that price is likely to stay firm for a while. While the 4690K is $50 cheaper not to forget the board, ram, and coolers are cheaper.

This is why AMD needs to stay competitive.

[BicycleMafioso]

Not more than the IPC changes, no. But those are practically identical with Broadwell.
Cache? It seems that the more cache on the i7 compared to the i5 in general is a boon.

I would also like to see such a test.

[mrgreenthump]

This is why AMD needs to stay competitive.

Well they have the ball on their court now.. So if they can deliver Zen before Skylake Extreme comes. They have a chance to steal some people back. Though it needs to be a perfect launch and perform well.

[Deleted]

Well I doubt intel were holding back on these chips, considering the delays intel have been having, AMD have a good chance to catch up albeit they are a long way from releasing zen.

The X99 platform with the haswell-E are still holding strong so they may release skylake-E after kaby lake or just scrap sky/kaby lake and just go straight to cannonlake-E.

Eitherway, we are far away from any newer type cpus from either brand now sadly.

If AMD actually do release a really good chip and compete with intel, hopefully board makers release a large selection of boards for them because its pretty thin in comparison to intel boards.

[Artorius]

What AMD needs right now is a company with actual money and R&D to buy them.
From the rumors, Samsung was the only candidate that could try to go against Intel at both but I believe they'd focus hard on mobile and ARM since they already dominate this area.

Zen is promising by it's manufacturing process change alone, I hope it doesn't disappoint much.

[Vash The Stampede]

I doubt Zen will surpass Haswell in performance, unless AMD does something totally new that wasn't expected. We're a long way off until Zen is released. Meanwhile nothing about Carrizo. I think we're hitting a wall for how fast x86 can get single core, which is why I say WoW needs better multithreaded support.

[mrgreenthump]

What AMD needs right now is a company with actual money and R&D to buy them.
From the rumors, Samsung was the only candidate that could try to go against Intel at both but I believe they'd focus hard on mobile and ARM since they already dominate this area.

People would jump up to the chance to buy Ati from AMD, but I doubt they want to seperate them. But if Zen core fails, I'm quite sure AMD is done and has to sell. And it's down to the buyer if we will see AMD CPUs anymore, which is sad.

[Artorius]

People would jump up to the chance to buy Ati from AMD, but I doubt they want to seperate them. But if Zen core fails, I'm quite sure AMD is done and has to sell. And it's down to the buyer if we will see AMD CPUs anymore, which is sad.

Samsung is that company that loves to show off their toys and always wants to have the best flagship product, so there's hope.

In the case of MS, which is the other rumor, I don't know what to expect besides console improvements.

[Tehterokkar]

I was waiting for Skylake to upgrade my i5-2500k, but seeing as Skylake is not even better than previous gen, guess I will have to wait yet another year for the next generation...

Just hoping my old sandy bridge won't just die out suddenly from age.

[mrgreenthump]

Why Skylake seems slower at some situations.. DDR4 is slower than DDR3. Overall Skylake is quite a bit faster. Not enough to upgrade from Haswell etc, but something like Sandy Bridge, if it's not only for gaming.. I would seriously consider. If it's a gaming only rig, CPU past a certain point really doesn't matter anyways for now.

Just hoping my old sandy bridge won't just die out suddenly from age.

My other comp is still chugging along with I5 750 clocked at 4.1 GHz.. That CPU is like almost 6 years old now and it's been on almost constantly since purchasing it, so I would worry about the 2500k yet.

[Pterodactylus]

It looks like the best thing to come out of Skylake's release are the Z170 Mobos to go with it.

[Vash The Stampede]

My other comp is still chugging along with I5 750 clocked at 4.1 GHz.. That CPU is like almost 6 years old now and it's been on almost constantly since purchasing it, so I would worry about the 2500k yet.

My HTPC uses a Phenom II X4 820 and that's nearly as old. Was wondering if it's time for upgrade but I'll wait a bit longer for a deal.