Skylake launches in August

It looks like Skylake i7 6700K and i5 6500K launch August 5th.  My question to those in the know, how does the i7 6700K compare to the 5960X?  I know the 6700K is only a 4 core / 8 threads and draws only 95W.  It has a 4.0 clock speed Ghz and is an unlocked processor.  What are people's thoughts on the performance vs. the current chips?  Does the increased 8 GB L3 cache make a huge difference?

i'm just going to throw this out there as food for thought:  is anyone really all that jacked up about an average of 3-4% (per year) IPC performance increases we've seen over the last 7 years?  sure, you're getting die shrinks and more power efficiency, which if we're being realistic isn't really saving us all that much money (at least over the upgrade cycle most of us "enthusiasts" adhere to).  it's almost as if Intel has kicked their collective feet up on the desk, basking in the comfortable stranglehold they have on the desktop market, dolling out minor IGP increases and relegating IPC improvement (since they don't have to with no competition) as an afterthought. 

i haven't been excited about anything since Sandy Bridge, and anyone with a good SB proc need not move away from it for anything, up to and including Sky Lake (at least for a quad core).  it's not like we aren't seeing a need for raw performance when several AAA games are cpu bound these days.  hopefully we'll see software developers take advantage of what Windows 10/DX12 offers and we actually see some efficient multi-core optimization going forward, but that's a lot of holding one's breath.  

having said all of that.  the platform with longevity currently is the very reachable X99/5820K.  DDR4 prices are falling, so the platform as a whole is more realistic and, while per clock performance of the 5820K isn't anything to write home about over the DC 4790K (it's close enough), those 6 cores offer more of a long term value and should eventually show marked improvement over quad cores when/if per core efficiency/optimization becomes the industry norm in software developer land.  also, it's rare to see a 5820K that doesn't oc very well, even with the cpu lottery.  DC on the other hand has an on-board graphics chip (irrelevant to anyone using discrete gpu) that contributes to poor thermal performance/oc'ing headroom. 

also, to answer the op, yes the extra cache matters.  as do the extra 12 PCIe lanes, especially when you have so many more devices (i.e. high speed PCIe storage) other than/in addition to a gpu vying for them. 



Edited by db188 - 21 Jul 2015 at 3:21am

There are some benchmarks also at:
http://wccftech.com/wipintel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-core-i7-4790k-devils-canyon-performance-benchmarks-leaked-tested-ecs-z170-claymore-motherboard/

It does like like a mild bump...

Originally posted by  Originally posted by db188 hopefully we'll see software developers take advantage of what Windows 10/DX12 offers and we actually see some efficient multi-core optimization going forward, but that's a lot of holding one's breath [...] DC on the other hand has an on-board graphics chip (irrelevant to anyone using discrete gpu) that contributes to poor thermal performance/oc'ing headroom. Check this out...with DX12 the iGPU could very well become a significant part of the graphics performance of a computer, especially now that they are becoming nearly as powerful as mid-range consumer cards. It also appears as though the i7-6700K will overclock extremely well. This is not entirely surprising, as you may notice that the i7-6700K has a TDP of 95W and the i7-6700 will have a TDP of 65W...the 50% bump in power will be good for a bit more than 400MHz increase, and it can apparently do so without a big jump in voltage. The end-game for Intel is not with the architecture in the Haswell parts with a ring-bus inter-core communications path. They are driving toward more a mesh network that they've been developing for their Knight Landing HPC. As that architecture is developed out, it will start to appear in consumer and mobile processors down the road. http://www.realworldtech.com/knights-landing-details/

yeah, i saw that 5.2GHz on air claim and until i see benchmarks i tend to call BS on them.  they did the same thing with DC and no consumer has been able to replicate what cherry-picked engineering samples have claimed to do.  to the contrary, i tend to believe that thermal headroom is reduced when you unnecessarily clutter a desktop cpu with on-board graphics that are better served by discrete cards anyways. 

as far as the rest, i was talking more about the here and now and what will prove to have more legs/be a better long term investment from what's on offer now.  a lateral jump to another quad core (in Skylake) with miniscule IPC improvements from DC or even as far back as SB is pointless from a power user standpoint.  the 6 and 8 core Haswell-E's offer more, especially with the tools provided to software developers by the new OS, until something truly innovative/evolutionary comes along for desktop pc users.