Intel's Skylake Architecture Reviewed

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Intel's Skylake Architecture Reviewed

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 5, 2015 @02:28AM from the how-do-you-swim-in-a-sky-lake dept.

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.

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Much ado about relatively little yet. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:35 · Score: 1

The performance increase is going to be negligible until the "new instructions" on the skylake are utilized more in daily software use. Buy today, pay a premium for basically no bump.
1. Re:Much ado about relatively little yet. by Junta · 2015-08-05 02:45 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Of course, the biggest monster jump didn't make it in:
  http://wccftech.com/mainstream...
  So there might not be very dramatic bumps to be had even with updated libraries/compilers/etc.
  
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2. Re:Much ado about relatively little yet. by Carewolf · 2015-08-05 03:46 · Score: 1
  
  The performance increase is going to be negligible until the "new instructions" on the skylake are utilized more in daily software use. Buy today, pay a premium for basically no bump.
  I don't think there are any new instructions in the consumer version of Skylake. As far as I know they are reserving the new instructions for the Xeon models only.
skylake architecture by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:36 · Score: 0

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
1. Re:skylake architecture by ausekilis · 2015-08-05 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  Oblig: But can it run Crysis?
2. Re: skylake architecture by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:57 · Score: 0
  
  Natalie Portman approved
3. Re:skylake architecture by AdamHaun · 2015-08-05 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  It's been almost eight years. I think a $30 video card could probably do a decent job of running Crysis at this point.
  
  --
  Visit the
Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:43 · Score: 0

This caught everyone off guard. It is interesting that they released the unlocked K series targeted at enthusiasts first. As a Haswell refresh owner I see no reason to upgrade. I applaud Intel for finally ditching the included fan and heat sink on the K model; any overclocker will immediately install an after market cooling solution.
1. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 03:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Are you kidding? As an owner of several Sandy Bridge systems there is no reason to upgrade.
  Heck. I still have two Core i7-920 systems at work and I'm not touching them, they work just fine running Windows 10.
  Intel hasn't had competition from AMD in years and this is the result.
2. Re:Wow! by Shinobi · 2015-08-05 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  I own Sandy Bridge systems too, and there are some reasons why I am seriously looking at upgrading. A noticeable performance increase, with quite a bit of power saving is always nice. A swedish hardware site has taken up another metric for it, by calculating the amount of joules used in total to render the scene Island in Blender at a set resolution and quality level, minus the rounded off idle energy use by the 980 Ti used in their tests. All results in joule, lower is better:
  http://cdn.sweclockers.com/art...
3. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for sharing... Always interesting to see things put another way...
  I don't doubt that the performance per watt is improving, that is one of Intel's main focus points over the past few years.
  It would be interesting to put that difference in power into a dollar figure, because while it saves power, how much does the upgrade from i7 Sandy Bridge to i7 Skylake cost in terms of dollars (and downtime and labor which aren't free for anyone doing actual work)
  -----------
  However, the above point aside...
  If you're doing THAT kind of work, you shouldn't be on any of them, that is what Xeon is for! :)
  If you either make a living (or work for a company that does) doing image editing, render work, etc. you should be on a 8+ core Xeon. The cost of the computer is trivial compared to the cost of the employee's time.
4. Re:Wow! by Shinobi · 2015-08-05 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  Who says it's only about work? I do things like this for a hobby, and I'm not going to waste money by buying YET another system when it's not necessary. Besides, the 8+ core Xeons tend to sacrifice clockspeed instead, making them less useful for when you need the single-threaded performance for some tasks.
  As for the link, keep in mind, that's the energy just for a single still image. Multiply for every frame in an animation as necessary, and you can see where the savings pile up.
5. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 06:03 · Score: 2
  
  Who says it's only about work?
  I was simply point out that the 25% jump in performance over Sandy Bridge is only really going to matter to people who use the computer for that type of work. If it is a hobby, then your time isn't worth money. :)
  
  I do things like this for a hobby
  Fair enough... But if you're doing it for a hobby, are you going to spend $800 to upgrade from Sandy Bridge to Skylake for a 25% boost to performance?
  
  As for the link, keep in mind, that's the energy just for a single still image. Multiply for every frame in an animation as necessary, and you can see where the savings pile up.
  Sure, except what do those savings translate into? $5 a year, $5 a month, or $5 a day?
  I'm all for saving power, it does cost money after all, but how much are we talking about in terms of money?
  If you do this as a hobby, then speed may not be that big of a concern anyway, just run jobs overnight. The power bill might add up, which is why I asked what that translated to in dollars over time.
  
  Besides, the 8+ core Xeons tend to sacrifice clockspeed instead, making them less useful for when you need the single-threaded performance for some tasks.
  While that is true, they make up for it in spades in performance. A nice dual core Xeon server with a pair of 18 core CPUs for a total of 72 threads running at 2.5 GHz will completely and totally crush anything you could dream of for Skylake. It'll also be rather expensive, at about $15k just for the CPUs, but considering a good employee doing that kind of work costs 5 times that, it is cheap as chips by comparison.
  ---
  I suppose my point is that for the vast majority of people, Skylake is not worth upgrading to unless you're still on Core2, and even then for many people those work fine.
  You might be one of the exceptions. :)
6. Re:Wow! by Zak3056 · 2015-08-05 06:47 · Score: 2
  
  Intel hasn't had competition from AMD in years and this is the result.
  I'm not sure this follows. Intel's primary focus for the last 5-10 years (some would say longer) has been process technology, and I don't think lack of competition from AMD has hurt that at all. You might make the argument that the previous generation's failure of desktop parts to materialize in real quantity, and this generation's tick-tock-THUNK cycle are signs that they're coasting because of lack of competition, but simply saying "my 28nm chip and my 14nm chip are fairly close in performance, damn you monopolistic Intel!" ignores the fact that they really HAVE been pushing hard to keep their edge. It's just that their goals and your goals for the technology are not aligned.
  Today, their competitor isn't AMD. It's Global Foundries, TSMC, etc.
  
  --
  What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
7. Re:Wow! by vyvepe · 2015-08-05 06:59 · Score: 1
  
  I was considering upgrades because of power savings many times and I always did a computation how long it would take so that the saved energy pays for the upgrade. Mostly the result was about 9 years. It was always bigger than 4 years. In other words it does not make sense to upgrade because of power savings. I guess only Germans (where energy is ridiculously expensive for home users) may consider upgrade because of power savings :)
8. Re:Wow! by lgw · 2015-08-05 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  I need CPU to rip video, at home. Xeon is ridiculously overpriced. My current Sandy Bridge is 4-cores, OCed to 4GHz, which is fine for DVD but "run overnight" slow for BluRay. Haswell offerer 8-cores, and is 20% faster clock-for-clock, but I didn't want to replace my system so soon when it was new. Skylake looks to be faster still clock-for-clock, and can be OCed to 4.8 GHz, so a likely 80% improvement per core. That's a big deal to me. I'll likely wait a bit for the 8-core, as I want a 3x improvement when I build my next PC.
  For rendering video professionally, you just can't beat EC2 Spot for price, forget buying your own anything. Not the easiest environment to code for (you have actually be fault tolerant, not just give lip service, and it really helps if you can run on a variety of hardware choices), but it's worth it if you need millions of core-hours cheap (or even thousands, if it's a hobby and you don't want to wait weeks for your home PC to crank it out).
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
9. Re:Wow! by ExekielS · 2015-08-05 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  Don't forget it isn't just raw watt savings. You also have the heat dissipation of that heat, and then the additional AC load and it's inefficiency. I'd multiply power savings by 3-4 if you want an accurate figure for amount saved.
  
  --
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10. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 08:50 · Score: 0
  
  You forgot that:
  1/ you do not necessarily live in a place where you need AC, especially all year long;
  2/ in most places, you heat in winter, so you do not care a bit about the electrical power used during this time, as it just contributes to home heating.
  So: 1/ doesn't make the power saving much higher during this period and 2/ nullifies the power saving during that period. As a result, you really cannot multiply the savings by 3 or 4 in most cases.
11. Re:Wow! by hairyfeet · 2015-08-05 10:04 · Score: 1
  
  Just FYI but by simply changing from the Intel Cripple Compiler to GCC? You "magically" get AMD chips costing a third of the price trading blows with i5s and i7s, wow, isn't that amazing? And if you use real world applications (instead of benchmarks that use the Cripple Compilers) we again see the exact same results with AMD chips costing a third of the price trading blows with Intel chips. the AMD better on multithreaded and the Intel better on single thread, as one would expect.
  So what can we take away from this? Its quite obvious, one company has been allowed to rip people off by manipulating the market with rigged tests (because if the tests were legit they would have to price their products more competitively with AMD) and if you ignore the rigged benches you'll find that $130 AMD competes quite well with that $300 Intel.
  I've been able to back this up with what I've seen at the shop, with the i5s and i7s that have come in trading blows with the much cheaper FX8xxx chips. In fact I was so impressed by the performance of the FX8 chips when it came time to upgrade my own system I chose the FX8320E, it trivially OCs to the higher 8350 while using less power when I don't need the extra speed, and it blows through transcodes and games like a boss. Final cost for it, an R9 280, 16Gb of RAM, and a really nice Asus gamer board? $516 shipped. The kind of system you'd put together on the Intel side for that money would be along the lines of an i3, not even in the same class.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
12. Re:Wow! by vyvepe · 2015-08-05 11:07 · Score: 1
  
  Don't forget it isn't just raw watt savings. You also have the heat dissipation of that heat, and then the additional AC load and it's inefficiency. I'd multiply power savings by 3-4 if you want an accurate figure for amount saved.
  Fans running at a bit higher RPM does not increase energy consumption in a noticeable way. A typical PC fan power consumption is about 2W. If you are water cooling without fans then there will not be any difference at all.
  If you need air-condition at all then you must realize that these systems have COP of about 4. That means that increasing heat dissipation of your computer by X watts will lead to increase of air-condition consumption by about X/4. That means that your power multiplier of 3-4 is very wrong. If you really want to apply it at all (notice that in during winter you save on heating) then it should be somewhere around 1.25 - 1.3. That does not make a significant difference.
13. Re:Wow! by Kjella · 2015-08-05 11:58 · Score: 1
  
  Intel will always invest in process tech as that lowers their cost. They won't lower their price until they get competition though.
  Sandy Bridge: 216 mm^2 @ 32nm, $317 list price, $336 inflation adjusted
  Ivy Bridge: 160 mm^2 @ 22nm
  Haswell: 177 mm^2 @ 22nm, $339 list price
  Broadwell: 133 mm^2 @ 14nm
  Skylake: ??? mm^2?, $350 list price
  Intel can probably make around 5 Skylake CPUs on the same die space as 3 Sandy Bridge and still sell them for the same price, essentially two more CPUs of pure profit. Make no mistake, these are massive cash cows and if competition had been normal we should have had them for ~$200 or hex-core at current prices.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
14. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 12:03 · Score: 0
  
  It's not because of competition, it's because CPUs have gotten to the point where they do what we need to in a time span that's acceptable to us. I have an FX8350 that's a few years old now, and see no reason to upgrade yet.
  The majority of users are fine with low end $100 APUs or low-power ARM based tablets/phones.
15. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 14:36 · Score: 0
  
  As an owner of several Sandy Bridge systems
  If you had only one, your opinion would have exactly the same influence. In fact, you can own zero and read tech, and still know more than if you owned 100 Sandy Bridge systems/cpu's.
  
  there is no reason to upgrade.
  Maybe not to Skylake but to Ivy or Haswell there would be a reason to buy it. Bang for buck, Ivy is still great. With Haswell you get something like 10% more performance than Ivy for comparable cores, because more transistors/features, but I remember Haswell had a heat problem. I never looked if that was resolved.
  eg. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157337-the-haswell-paradox-the-best-cpu-in-the-world-unless-youre-a-pc-enthusiast
  
  running Windows 10.
  Windows 10 is not wow.
  http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/
  http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/07/11/microsoft-gave-the-nsa-direct-backdoor-access-to-outlook-skype/
  http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/how-stop-windows-10-upgrade-downloading-your-system
  http://www.extremetech.com/computing/195592-with-windows-10-microsoft-could-move-to-a-subscription-based-model
  http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205320-microsoft-windows-10-will-be-the-last-version-of-windows
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU5uv28a3I
  http://techrights.org/2015/07/31/vista-10-anticompetitive/
  
  Intel hasn't had competition from AMD in years and this is the result.
  I do agree that Intel have better CPU's. You get more bang for the buck even though it's more bucks. But "this is the result"... lost me there. Maybe you are saying they made more money so could re-invest in more R&D and come up with superior technologies? But at the beginning you said keep your Sandy bridge because I have lots of them and Windows 10.
  http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/here-we-explain-the-basic-differences-between-intel-and-amd-cpus/
  Kids, stay off drugs if you fly helicopters.
  http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5960X-vs-Intel-Core-i7-2700K
16. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 16:13 · Score: 1
  
  Fair enough... But since I can't recompile most programs, I have to take what exists...
  Many games simply run faster on Intel. Regardless of the reason, they just do...
  If AMD has a case, they should file a complaint with the proper government dept, but it is beyond my ability to do anything about it...
  Then there is power consumption, AMD uses more power per unit of performance, makes more heat, so that is something as well...
17. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  If Intel had any real competition, we'd be seeing an 8 core Skylake for $250 minus the IGP.
  It would fit in about the same number of transistors as what we are getting, but Intel has no need to provide it and cut into Xeon sales because AMD's 8 core chip is not competitive.
  In fact, AMD's 8 core chip is slower than Intel's 4 core chip in most tasks... that right there is the problem...
18. Re:Wow! by Zak3056 · 2015-08-06 01:34 · Score: 1
  
  That's fair enough--while the costs of building new fabs are astronomical (and growing) so that chip prices should not necessarily fall linearly with die size, it's fair to say that they've definitely been padding their margins, rather than cutting prices (and I'll agree that it's due to a lack of serious competition) so I think you win the point.
  That said, the treadmill here is about to stop spinning (I think that I've read that 7nm (maybe 4nm?) is basically the last possible process node, because at that point you're at the atomic scale). They're probably counting their blessings that they have the opportunity to pad their margins now, because the lean years are coming--once they hit the wall, they won't be able to reduce manufacturing costs, and a market used to ever decreasing prices will not accept the opposite of that just to protect Intel's (already high) margins.
  The above is what will probably kill x86 in the end... when they can't shrink their way out of a relative performance problem.
  
  --
  What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
19. Re:Wow! by hairyfeet · 2015-08-06 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  You are paying on average 100% to 200% MORE for...what? An average of 8-12% in only SOME games, which are the ones compiled with the crippler.
  If somebody offered you a car for 200% more that went 10% faster only on some roads...would you take it? For a stereo that is 12% louder on certain songs? Of course not because you are not getting your moneys worth and if you are spending less than a grand on your system (because AMD doesn't have any ultra high tier $500+ chips therefor Intel doesn't have any competition) then that is exactly what you are doing.
  Show me a single game, just one, that can't get easily 30FPS-60FPS+ on an AMD FX8 with a decent GPU like the R9 280 or 290...I seriously doubt you can, because I play War Thunder and World Of Warships with bling cranked and even with shells flying from over a Km away from every direction and tracers lighting up the sky? I have yet to fall below 30FPS at 1080P. And with the money I saved I get to have better parts than you have for the same money, be it better GPU, more RAM, a faster SSD, and these things will let me win in a head to head shootout as almost no modern games are CPU locked anymore. this is what that Intel fanboy found out when he bragged his...snicker...i3 4130 could compete with an FX8320E. He spent almost the exact same amount as me, in fact my system was $18 cheaper, yet I had 16GB to his 8GB and my R9 280 is a full tier higher than his 750Ti, which he had to take as he had to get a weaksauce shitty PSU to try to save a few bucks to get his...snicker...i3 "beast"...bwa ha ha ha ha...sorry, hearing somebody brag about his i3 hoopty was funny as hell!
  Finally as for filing charges? In case you haven't figured it out our government is as corrupt as any banana republic., Even former POTUS Jimmy Carter came out and said flat footed the USA is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy, where all that matters is how much you can kick back in contributions. But what you CAN do is refuse to support corruption, and the evidence is readily available, in fact even Intel admitted they rig benchmarks and will pay you $15 to settle a class action (one of several they have had to pay, and they are currently being investigated by the EU and a dozen other countries for corrupt practices, just FYI) where they...wait for it, see if this sounds familiar...paid benchmark companies to use the cripple compiler which then fudged the shit out of the numbers and made the dog slow P4 appear to be faster than the now recognized as superior Athlon64.
  But don't take my word for it, look up "Intel cripples compiler" and see for yourself. One researcher even took a Via CPU (the only CPU that allows you to change the CPUID on the fly) and by simply changing the CPUID from"centaur hauls" to "genuine Intel" can you guess what happened? The exact same CPU, exact same test...35% higher score! And fewer and fewer games are being affected by this, as not only has users complaining caused more devs to avoid ICC but modders are releasing mods all the time that remove the cripple flag.
  So if you spent less than a grand on your system? you just spent more for less while supporting corruption, simple as that. Look at the links I posted, in real world applications you see the A series trading blows with i5s (despite that being half the price) and the FX8350s trading blows with i7s (despite those being nearly 2 and a half times more expensive) and if you intend to do anything besides just game, like streaming your play or running ventrillo? Then the AMD wins, and usually by a large margin. And I can personally back this up as I like to record my gameplay so I can save my best kills, with no hardware acceleration, software recording only? Still staying above 30FPS with the bling cranked, even when I record 2- 3 hours of footage at a time. I have zero slowdowns or dropped frames despite all the chaos.
  Don't just buy the BS you are being handed friend, try 'em yourself and I bet my last buck in a side by side test running the same games you will tell NO difference...but your wallet will.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
20. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-06 16:45 · Score: 1
  
  the FX8350s trading blows with i7s (despite those being nearly 2 and a half times more expensive)
  You show your bias...
  The i7 is not 2.5 times more expensive, it isn't even 2 times more expensive.
  The FX8350 is $175 at NewEgg right now, the i7 Haswell refresh is $309... but the reality is that the i5 beats the FX8350 in most cases, the hyperthreading of the i7 is simply not required.
  The i5 is $185, or only $10 more than the FX, it consumes half the power and is faster in single threaded and dual threaded applications. Only in applications that can use 8 cores does the AMD have any chance.
  So you're an AMD fanboy, and that's ok, AMD needs a few of those these days...
21. Re:Wow! by hairyfeet · 2015-08-07 12:28 · Score: 1
  
  So that is just a hair below double the price...your arguments? Half of $309 is $154, the FX8350 is a grand $14 more than that on Amazon. And for the record I tell folks to get the FX8320 as there really is no point in the FX8350, you can get the same speed in less than 2 minutes with the 8320 (they ARE the same chip after all, just binned differently) and that $30 can go on your GPU or SSD. I personally took the FX8320E as I can also hit nearly the same as the FX8350 but I can drop lower when I don't need the extra power, thus saving me a few bucks on AC bills.
  So its being a "fanboy" to not support corruption? Because the links I gave show beyond a shadow of a doubt, even Intel admitted it when they agreed to give every P4 owner $15 for rigging benches. Hell look up "Intel investigated" and see how many places are investigating them for their corrupt shit, or read for yourself what the CEOs of companies like Dell and Toshiba said during the deposition for the Intel VS AMD suit (which the DoJ allowed Intel to pay less than 6 months revenue at the time to buy their way out of 10+ years worth of dirty dealing. Wish I could get a deal like that) or again look at the results of benches compiled with ICC versus GCC, ICC does NOT speed up in any way, shape, or form Intel CPUs, its only result is to cripple any non Intel CPUs.
  So if you wanna support corruption? That is your choice, I will not.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
22. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-07 20:41 · Score: 2
  
  So its being a "fanboy" to not support corruption?
  No, the fanboy part is where you keep comparing the i7 to the AMD chip, when the i5 is a better comparison...
  For games and most users, the i7 offers nothing useful, the i5 is just as fast.
  And the i5 is the same price, give or take $10, over the AMD chip.
23. Re:Wow! by cheesybagel · 2015-08-08 04:44 · Score: 1
  
  You can recompile if you use Linux with OSS.
24. Re:Wow! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-08 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  You can recompile if you use Linux with OSS.
  Yes, but that doesn't help since the topic is games, and the fact that most games are simply faster on Intel.
  The why is beside the point...
  A $185 Intel i5 chip runs most games faster than a $175 AMD FX chip does...
  Linux is not a viable gaming platform, regardless of how much some people wish it were. Even if it was, you can't recompile any of the games so it completely doesn't matter. Battlefield is not open source, so the OS being open source wouldn't matter.
NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:46 · Score: -1

With all the built-in wireless crap and the aggressive push of Windows 10, you just can't help but think Skylake is riddled with backdoors that make NSA snooping even easier.
1. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  That's why the Raspberry Pi 2 is a much better solution. Since its SoC is made in China, you know there's no NSA backdoor in it!
2. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by jandrese · 2015-08-05 02:57 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, the spying stuff is on the Z170 chipset, hidden away in the Intel Management Engine. Too bad Intel killed off third party chipsets awhile back.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by kamapuaa · 2015-08-05 03:03 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Yeah, I thought it was really suspicious when Microsoft heavily promoted the new version of their operating system. Then when hardware manufacturers kept on including wifi and bluetooth in their hardware, without the need for an external card, I knew the only possible explanation was a massive snooping campaign by the NSA.
  
  --
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4. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by jones_supa · 2015-08-05 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  What kind of spying stuff?
5. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, we all prefer a PLA front door.
6. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 05:59 · Score: 0
  
  Nah, the spying stuff is on the Z170 chipset, hidden away in the Intel Management Engine. Too bad Intel killed off third party chipsets awhile back.
  It's hard to pull off a hardware hack that would be visible to many hundreds of engineers.
  Go check the hypervisors. It's much easier to inject a back door there.
7. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Kjella · 2015-08-05 08:11 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Sure, because there's nothing here that could be explained by market trends.
  1. Microsoft's monopoly is cracking badly, though perhaps not in the way most of us imagined. If you look at StatCounter's platform stats it's now 55% desktop, 39% mobile, 6% tablets and the desktop has been losing 10%/year the last few years. And people expect apps for their platform, if you're only on Windows or even Mac/Linux too you're now a dinosaur unless it absolutely requires a traditional desktop.
  2. The OS is going to become a commodity, they saw what happened with Android once it hit critical mass. Chromebooks are an early warning. Also that XP and Win7 work "too well" so users aren't interested in upgrading, even though it's an expense maybe twice a decade. That MS Office - their stranglehold on the business market - is now on mobile and tablets is clear proof Microsoft knows this.
  3. So their old strongholds are breaking down, where do they want to go next? They want to be the middleman between the app developers and the consumers, like Apple's App Store pioneered and Google Play mimic. To do that you need Win10 everywhere. You must get the snowball rolling that to make money you must be on the MS Shop, the same way you could install apps from other sources on Android but the vast majority don't. If you're not on Google Play, you "don't exist".
  As for Intel:
  1. Mobile, tablets, convertibles, laptops all need wireless connectivity and it's basically just expected features today like network and sound is on desktops, they used to be add-in cards once but was integrated long ago. And fewer and fewer want the hassle of running cables as WiFi speeds go to hundreds of megabits. It's also a simple way for Intel to steal market share by vertical integration, squeezing out third party chips.
  2. And here's the kicker people don't seem to understand, Intel doesn't really make desktop chips anymore. Their mainstream chips are laptop spin-offs which get a higher TDP and a few other modifications, the same way their high end chips are Xeon spin-offs. That is also why they sell grossly overpriced desktop chips with better IGP, even though you can do much cheaper with a dGPU. They're just laptop spin-offs that happen to sell well enough to make a desktop version of.
  3. So what's the combined effect? Well, you get the laptop features for "free", whether you want them or not. Same way Intel puts an IGP in every chip killing off much of the second hand GPU market, before you had machines that needed any old graphics card and now you don't. Less resale/reuse value means gaming cards in net cost more. It's an indirect way of using their dominance in the CPU business to expand without running into antitrust problems, at least so far.
  Or maybe I'm just a NSA disinformation agent out to discredit the revealing of our secret master plan. But you have to admit the cover story is pretty credible, yes?
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
8. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 11:10 · Score: 0
  
  2. And here's the kicker people don't seem to understand, Intel doesn't really make desktop chips anymore. Their mainstream chips are laptop spin-offs which get a higher TDP and a few other modifications, the same way their high end chips are Xeon spin-offs. That is also why they sell grossly overpriced desktop chips with better IGP, even though you can do much cheaper with a dGPU. They're just laptop spin-offs that happen to sell well enough to make a desktop version of.
  This actually isn't true. The chips that go into all the thin laptops people like these days are use a different mask set than the chips that go in desktops (They are physically different implementations, even though the microarchitecture is the same, but by that logic a Xeon E7 is the same chip as well. They put a GPU in because it easily benefits from the area. Even if you could make the CPU twice as big, the added performance would be rather minimal and would make their big server parts twice as expensive and effectively lower the price they can charge for their server parts. You also ignore the fact that most people don't buy desktops for gaming and won't use a high-end discrete GPU, Intel's not going to give up that market to Nvidia/AMD when they don't need to.
9. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 17:28 · Score: 0
  
  *whoosh*
10. Re:NSA & Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 19:39 · Score: 0
  
  This actually isn't true
  Yes, it actually is true. DT and M segments use the same dies, U and Y are different.
  
  but by that logic a Xeon E7 is the same chip as well
  Nope, because that's actually a different die.
  It's like claiming i7-5xxx and Xeon E3v4 are the same chip, or S2011-3 i7 and LCC E5v3, or i7-4xxx and Xeon E3v3, or S2011 i7 and E5v2, or i7-3xxx and Xeon E3v2, or ...
I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 02:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

I just wish that Intel would make a version that's 8 cores instead with lots of cache rather than waste the space and power on the integrated graphics. If you are gaming with it then you would have a dedicated card since all IGPs pretty much suck, and if you aren't gaming on it there isn't much point to improving it since even the most basic IGP can run video and 2d applications just fine.
1. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:03 · Score: 0
  
  They do make those, they're called Xeons.
2. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:06 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah but GPUs aren't just for graphics/gaming any more. The ability to rely on this class of CPU always having a GPU of a certain spec may not be so useful for desktop users, but you see how much racks with GPUs cost compared to racks with just the latest i7.
3. Re:I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  Those aren't enthusiast parts and aren't multiplier unlocked. They also aren't available in larger core configs with consumer level pricing.
4. Re:I Wish by Bengie · 2015-08-05 03:08 · Score: 2
  
  They do, and they sell them for $600+ under their Xeon brand.
5. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  ...and a pony!
6. Re:I Wish by Barbecue911 · 2015-08-05 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  My wish is for more low power Intel CPUs. An Ivy Bridge Core i3-class (ca 2012) CPU in a sub-5W envelope would be nice so I can run a fanless setup with room for doing kernel and Android ROM compilation.
7. Re:I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  and again, they don't have consumer level pricing, and don't have unlocked multipliers. 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.
  
  That would be a huge leap in progress for the CPU side of things for people who run dedicated graphics cards already. In gaming benchmarks the amount of difference at usable resolutions like 1080P and higher there is really little noticeable difference between a 2600k and a 6700k already. It's almost like CPU performance gains just stopped being pushed forward. Why can't we get twice as much processing power than a chip that's nearly 4 years old. Heck, even an i7-9xx is still pretty usable in most cases and they came out in 2008/2009.
8. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:31 · Score: 0
  
  Right, because businesses will pay more and would switch to the consumer parts if they were available. I know I buy the most cores I can for my hypervisors - I even still buy the AMD chips when they are price competitive. If I could get tons of cores in a cheaper i7, I certainly would.
9. Re:I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  But the K parts don't support VT-d so they aren't really ideal for VMs anyway, just mostly for power users that want to be able to tweak their gear.
10. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  Because AMD is in a heap of trouble. Why should Intel push the performance envelope when you need to buy a 8 Core, 200W TDP AMD CPU to beat a 90W 4 core Haswell i5 in terms of performance?
  Until AMD returns to the performance race with a good, competitive CPU lineup, you won't see major jumps from Intel. There is just no money to be had.
11. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 04:26 · Score: 0
  
  Hyper-V _requires_ VT-d to be disabled. You read that right, disabled.
  God I luv it to rain on wedding days.
12. Re:I Wish by supremebob · 2015-08-05 04:58 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, I would love to see a real high end enthusiast processor with 8 cores, hyperthreading, a 4+ GHz clock speed, and no integrated graphics.
  I'm thinking THAT processor would have more than a puny 30% performance increase over a 4 year old Sandy Bridge part.
  Maybe they could brand it with something new like "Core i9 Extreme Edition" to make it sound even more badass to the l33t gamer types.
13. Re:I Wish by Bengie · 2015-08-05 05:08 · Score: 2
  
  The new graphics APIs will allow IGPs to be faster for some work loads. Discrete GPUs have high throughput but also high communications latency, about 100x that of an IGP that is on chip. The IGP can communicate with the CPU directly via the L2/L3 cache, but a discrete GPU has to go over a high latency PCIe link with all kinds of encoding latency overhead.
  
  Let the IGP do physics, AI, or whatever, and leave the heavy crunching to the big boy. Newer game engines are looking into better ways to allow the screen to be broken into pieces, allowing multiple GPUs with different amounts of compute to work well as a team with efficient dynamic load balancing.
14. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 05:22 · Score: 0
  
  I checked again and it is enabled, on 4790K. On 4690K, too.
  On 4770K it was disabled. It is entirely arbitrary, and Intel lets things like that trickle down slowly over the years.
  As the other comment hints to, Vt-d is mostly unnecessary though. If you don't know why you need it, then you don't need it..
15. Re:I Wish by Retron · 2015-08-05 05:26 · Score: 2
  
  They do, the i7-5960X is a consumer, unlocked i7 chip. Loads of cache, no integrated graphics and a whacking great price because there's zero competition.
  (Of course, the X99 chips are only Haswell, but as the IPC improvements are minimal with Skylake they're still worth considering - especially the 6-core i7-5820K, which is actually cheaper than the new quad-core Skylake i7 here in the UK. The X99 chips are essentially Xeons with some bits turned off and overclocking enabled. They have vt-d enabled, amongst other things).
16. Re:I Wish by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I would love to see a real high end enthusiast processor with 8 cores, hyperthreading, a 4+ GHz clock speed, and no integrated graphics./quote.
  So would I... but they aren't doing that to avoid hurting Xeon sales...
  And in fairness, they DO have such a CPU... It is the Haswell-E line of chips, but it'll cost you a thousand bucks...
17. Re:I Wish by Kjella · 2015-08-05 06:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
18. Re:I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 06:44 · Score: 2
  
  You do make a pretty good point, but I doubt that programmers will take much advantage of an IGP to offload physics for example unless it can be completely transparent to the program that it's happening since you can never rely on the performance or even availability. So if you spend time optimizing that you end up taking time away from other things that could be done that target a broader group of people (figuring out which parts of your program could thread out to better support more cores as an example). For most things the IGP is just either going to sit there being disabled because a real GPU does that work, or it's going to be displaying facebook because someone was sold an i7 where an i3/Pentium/Celeron would be just as fast.
19. Re:I Wish by Traciatim · 2015-08-05 06:47 · Score: 1
  
  I do have a habit of forgetting about the 2011 based chips due to price of the whole platform. Maybe I'll have to take a look at whatever sits in that space when it comes time to replace my, now aging, 3570k that didn't want to overclock much.
20. Re:I Wish by Kjella · 2015-08-05 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  The new graphics APIs will allow IGPs to be faster for some work loads.
  The question is for how much extra work. As I understand it, from the DirectX/OpenGL side you don't really "notice" SLI/CF, the cards just take turns. That is why you effectively only get half the memory, they must mirror all the assets. With the low-level APIs all the details are exposed, but if you want to take advantage of the special cases well you have to write special case code. And the bulk of your market will not have any fancy new feature you introduced, so in the world with limited time and resources it doesn't happen in practice.
  For example, it's estimated that there's 300k SLI/CF users. That doesn't really sound much when there's billions of computers out there. And a lot of them like me could probably sell their two cards and buy a single card that would be faster today if it gave me trouble, it's not necessary to get that performance (anymore). Apart from a few tech demos I doubt we'll see anyone use the low level APIs to exploit that we actually have double the RAM to play with.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
21. Re:I Wish by fredgiblet · 2015-08-05 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  Speaking as someone who primarily uses his computer for gaming, I actually like having the IGP around, that way if my graphics card takes a dump my computer is still viable until I can get a replacement. Also at this point there's not a lot of consumer-level tasks that would benefit much from having 8 cores. Lastly Intel DOES have enthusiast level parts with 6 cores and no IGP.
22. Re:I Wish by armanox · 2015-08-05 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  And what are you doing in VMs that actually uses VT-d? As someone who used to manage thousands of VMs in a vSphere cluster...VT-d wasn't used at all.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
23. Re:I Wish by ExekielS · 2015-08-05 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  They're going to eventually come out with a skylake at that price point and level of power as well probably in Q2-Q4 2016, so I'd just wait for that to come out. It is unfortunate that there isn't any competition at that level, if there was I bet the chip's actual market price would be closer to 599-699.
  
  --
  ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
24. Re:I Wish by Bengie · 2015-08-05 08:51 · Score: 1
  
  DX12 and OpenGL Vulkan are based around treating a GPU as a compute engine and not a "graphics" anything. You compute the work, then write it out to a buffer to be displayed. At this point you just have a bunch of compute tasks and a bunch of compute engines. This new way of doing stuff scales nearly perfectly linearly with the number of total compute in your computer. There have been some tech demos of a system with xfire ATI cards, paired with an Nvidia and the Intel IGP, and the engine made near perfect use of all of the GPUs at the same time to increase the FPS.
  
  We are a point in time where people who write games no longer write the engines. Once some big engine rolls out these new features, everyone that uses that engine get a lot of benefit with no changes on their end. Of course the developers will need more understanding to make full use, but a lot of the basic stuff you can get for free from the engine. Like render this polygon. The game programmer does not need to know how its being rendered. Advanced shading will need to know more.
25. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 10:01 · Score: 0
  
  The AMD chip is not a true 8 core. It's a quad core with hyperthreading and extra integer units. I like to call it fake core technology. It's fine unless you need floating point. I consider the "8 core" AMD chips quad cores and the 4 cores dual when comparing to intel. Even if you disagree with my reasoning, performance wise it's a wash. Now if AMD would release a "12 core" chip then it might compete with core i7 quad cores. They'd have to die shrink to even try at this point.
26. Re:I Wish by nhat11 · 2015-08-05 23:15 · Score: 1
  
  There are jumps because intels primary competition is ARMs not AMD.
27. Re:I Wish by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-06 01:16 · Score: 0
  
  Giving the VM GPU for example. This way you can get near native Windows gaming performance under Linux.
28. Re:I Wish by toddestan · 2015-08-08 17:59 · Score: 1
  
  The best part of the IGP that I've found is when I lucked into a free 3770K, I was able to re purpose the 2600K into my Linux box, and suddenly that IGP that I was "never ever" going to use was a well supported, perfectly adequate solution for my Linux desktop without have to deal with binary blobs and whatnot.
  But seriously, what gamer doesn't have a stack of old GPU's around? I'm not even a gamer and the number of old graphics cards I have is impressive.
29. Re:I Wish by fredgiblet · 2015-08-08 18:07 · Score: 1
  
  I have one computer with discrete graphics, I don't upgrade often. My last card I think ended up going to a local computer recycler. I might have been able to get $30 for it, but I was employed then and didn't want the hassle. Also I purged my inventory of excess equipment when I moved last.
K & Virtualization features by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:05 · Score: 1

Still a deal breaker for me.
1. Re:K & Virtualization features by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:32 · Score: 0
  
  As far as I can see from online searches the i7-6700K supports VT-X & VT-D. I can't find any reliable information about the i5-6600K.
  I have to agree. If the CPU doesn't support VT-D, then it's a deal breaker for me.
And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by zenlessyank · 2015-08-05 03:07 · Score: 1

My next CPU is sooooo going to be an AMD.
1. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by drinkypoo · 2015-08-05 03:18 · Score: 2
  
  My next CPU is sooooo going to be an AMD.
  I just built a system with an AMD CPU, but the latest Haswell i5 with four cores is faster than it is. Skylake should beat it into a corner.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by armanox · 2015-08-05 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  I really wish AMD could put out something competitive.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
3. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by glsunder · 2015-08-05 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  Next year's Zen should be competitive, is said to have 40% better IPC than excavator, and will be on 14nm FinFet. Being stuck on 28nm has really limited their ability to compete.
4. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 03:57 · Score: 1
  
  I still have two Core i7-920 systems running as well and I won't replace them with this either.
  But I'm not going AMD, too much power use. Over a five year lifespan, the difference in power use and AC to cool the rooms adds up.
5. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 04:18 · Score: 0
  
  They said the same for their Bulldozer CPU, remember that?
6. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by drinkypoo · 2015-08-05 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  They said the same for their Bulldozer CPU, remember that?
  Sure, we all do, but we also remember the K6/2+ and /3+ and the K7, which were all fantastic. I wouldn't bet a lot on 'em, but I wouldn't count AMD out yet, either.
  If only they could get their graphics drivers in hand, I would really be a massive fan. As it is, I did just build an FX-8350-based machine, because it hit the right price point for me.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by Shinobi · 2015-08-05 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  Ewwww, I remember K6. While not as horrible as the K5, if you did anything other than integer work, it was a pile of junk. K7 otoh was overall great(Barton revision was fantastic), with some fails(Thoroughbred revisions for example...), and K8 was fantastic for a while.
8. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by drinkypoo · 2015-08-05 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  Ewwww, I remember K6. While not as horrible as the K5, if you did anything other than integer work, it was a pile of junk.
  The K6/3+ had adequate FPU, although yes, the P2 had more. But it was a seriously fast little processor, and while the P2 was only available in a slot package, it was still pinned. Aside from fp, it was actually faster than a P2, for less money. And the fp wasn't really all that bad.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
9. Re:And My i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz Lives On..... by Shinobi · 2015-08-05 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  I did a crapton of 3D rendering and such back then, and AMD K6's were basically dead in the water as far as anyone doing it on a hobby level beyond mere dabbling or professionally was concerned, especially when you also had the issues with AMD's AGP support(which persisted even partially into late K7 revisions).
Faster DMI link is the big part by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 03:25 · Score: 0

The old one really limited sata / pci-e storage / network / usb on the the older chipset.
Not Making Me Want to Ditch 4-1/2 Year Old 2600k by BrendaEM · 2015-08-05 03:26 · Score: 1

30% Percent Faster, perhaps, with the wind behind it, and if I don't overclock my rig.
Cinebench 931 VS 694 Multicore.
No, to be fair--it's only 25.4564983888292% Faster.

--
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
If you're on Sandy Bridge or newer, don't bother.. by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 04:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you're on Sandy Bridge or newer, don't bother unless you really need the new chipset features.
Benchmarks of course show a small gain, but in the real world I suspect you could do a blind test of Sandy Bridge next to Skylake and you couldn't tell the difference.
Anyone who needs the performance difference shouldn't be on either chip, if you do serious image/video editing, you should be on Xeon anyway with 8+ cores if you make a living doing such work. The cost of such a system is trivial compared to the cost of the employee doing such things.
I have several systems in my office, ranging from a single Q6600 machine and two Core i7-920 machines all the way up to a Haswell Refresh i7-4790k. The difference in general Windows performance between all those machines is minor. Games play, more or less, the same in anything Sandy Bridge or newer, and we don't do anything so intensive to require more power.
Come on AMD, get back in the game so Intel has some real competition. Since Core2Duo came out, you haven't been coming to the party.
DDR4 is nice, but where is ECC support? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 05:12 · Score: 1

It's 2015. I want ECC support on all chipsets. Don't make me buy a Xeon just to get ECC.
Now featuring binary GPU blobs by Second_Derivative · 2015-08-05 05:44 · Score: 2

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/i...
"No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted."
AnandTech makes a bold statement! by FlyHelicopters · 2015-08-05 05:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Reading AnandTech's review, they make a bold statement at the end:
"Sandy Bridge, Your Time Is Up."
That is an interesting thought, but is it really?
If you need USB 3, if you want some of the other newer chipset features, perhaps. But for performance?
In benchmarks, Skylake appears to be about 25% faster than Sandy Bridge. Sure, if you're doing video encoding all day or other CPU intensive applications, it is... (and if you ARE doing that stuff, why aren't you on Xeon?)
But for most desktop computer uses, you likely won't see any difference between the two. What is worse, is that most of the above gains came from Haswell, not Skylake.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
Look at the "Gains over Sandy Bridge" chart on that page. Look at the red lines, then the purple lines. The red lines are the Haswell gain over Sandy Bridge, then the purple lines are the Skylake gains over Sandy Bridge.
1. Re:AnandTech makes a bold statement! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  I am currently on a Sandy bridge cpu. I am considering a newer computer. It will probably be of the skylake generation. Maybe mid next year.
  Mostly because of the power reductions achieved in haswell. Plus the 50 other things that have improved in the ~3 years since I bought it. Such as more laptops having better mini pci slots. Built in video being better etc etc etc...
2. Re:AnandTech makes a bold statement! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 14:38 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, if you're doing video encoding all day or other CPU intensive applications, it is... (and if you ARE doing that stuff, why aren't you on Xeon?)
  Plex. I do video transcoding all the day long. My i7-3770 handles 4-5 simultaneous streams just fine. If I could get another 2 streams for the price of commodity hardware the price is reasonable.
dirty little secret by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 07:39 · Score: 0

Surprisingly, rarely discussed and completely undocumented, but E5 16xx 1P Xeons are very unlocked. And nope, not talking about ES versions either.
For example, my 4.5 Ghz (triple radiator) 8 core 1680 v2 that originally lived in a mac pro. There is a 14-core v3 SKU I would love to get my hands on for a new build...which might end up coming from a mac yet again.
1. Re:dirty little secret by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 08:47 · Score: 0
  
  Word of warning: MCC and HCC die based ones aren't unlocked, only the LCC die 4-8 core E5v3 Xeons.
Xeons are actually more attractive anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 08:18 · Score: 0

If there's one thing I learned when I came back from AMD-land and started building Intel systems again, it's that you end up buying Xeons anyway. (Not only do they support ECC RAM (whereas the Core i7 doesn't) but for some weird reason they cost less. Those Haswell E3 12xx-V3s are fuckin' sweet.) What's actually sad (relatively, it's not that big of a deal) about your link is the have-to-wait-for-Cannonlake part of it.
What I wanna know is: why is i7 called the "mainstream" one, when the Xeons are better in almost every way (including price) (though not including overclocking, which mainstream people don't do)? If my grandmother or niece were buying an i7 (or even an i5!), I would tell her to get a Xeon instead.
(Or maybe the question is: how come Xeons cost less? If they cost more then everything would make sense. But they're cheaper. WTF.)
1. Re:Xeons are actually more attractive anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-05 09:53 · Score: 0
  
  It depends. My wife built a new system a few months ago with a 2011v3 core i7 (5820 i think) six core. It was much cheaper at the time than the xeon 6 core and it has DDR4 support. She's got 32GB of RAM and SSD.
  For gaming, her system is great. That's what she primarily uses it for. Now with windows 10, it's screaming.
  I'm also running a core i7 4970 and i couldn't be happier with it.
640K by nhat11 · 2015-08-05 23:23 · Score: 1

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Lynnfield by WillgasM · 2015-08-06 09:22 · Score: 1

I'm still gaming on a Lynnfield. So, yeah, just about due for an upgrade.