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Intel's Skylake Architecture Reviewed

Posted by Soulskill on 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.

1 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. If you're on Sandy Bridge or newer, don't bother.. by FlyHelicopters · · 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.