Intel's Skylake Architecture Reviewed

Vigile writes: The Intel Skylake architecture has been on our radar for quite a long time as Intel's next big step in CPU design. We know at least a handful of details: DDR4 memory support, 14nm process technology, modest IPC gains and impressive GPU improvements. But the details have remained a mystery on how the "tock" of Skylake on the 14nm process technology will differ from Broadwell and Haswell. That changes today with the official release of the "K" SKUs of Skylake — the unlocked, enthusiast class parts for DIY PC builders. PC Perspective has a full review of the Core i7-6700K with benchmarks as well as discrete GPU and gaming testing that shows Skylake is an impressive part. IPC gains on Skylake over Haswell are modest but noticeable, and IGP performance is as much as 50% higher than Devil's Canyon. Based on that discrete GPU testing, all those users still on Nehalem and Sandy Bridge might finally have a reason to upgrade to Skylake. Other reviews available at Anandtech, Hot Hardware, [H]ard|OCP, and TechSpot.

Comments

Re:I Wish

[Kjella]

What I'm wishing for is essentially an i5 and i7 'max core' edition that removes the IGP but has a mirror of the existing cores in it's place so they each are essentially like 2 K edition chips stuck together.

It already exists, it's called the i7-5960x and costs $999 and needs an expensive X99 motherboard. Eight cores, no IGP, fully unlocked and uses standard DDR4 UDIMMs which are now almost at price parity with DDR3. You just don't like the price.