Intel Skylake embargo is over, new Z170 series motherboards and dual-channel DDR4 RAM kits released - Polidicks

[t]http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9483/Combo%20Box.png[/t] [url]http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation[/url] [quote=Anandtech]It’s the Intel review you’ve been waiting for. Today is the launch of the first two CPUs from Intel’s Skylake architecture, the 6th Generation Core i7-6700K and the Core i5-6600K. With the new processors we get a new architecture, a new socket, the move to DDR4 and the potential to increase both performance and efficiency at the same time. A lot of readers have asked the question – is it time to upgrade? We had a CPU or two in to test to answer that question. [B]Launch Day for Skylake-K: August 5th[/B] For those in the industry, predicting Skylake’s launch has been a minefield. Even at Computex in June, some companies were discussing a large six-week window in which they expected Skylake but were waiting on official dates. But as we've seen with a number of previous Intel mainstream launches, Intel likes to aim at the gaming crowds release at a gaming events. It just so happens that today is Gamescom in Germany, two weeks before what everyone expected would be a launch at Intel’s Developer Forum in mid-August. Today is a full launch for the Skylake-K processors, with the two CPUs being launched alongside new Z170 series motherboards and dual channel DDR4 memory kits. Having spoken to a few retailers, they have stock ready to go today. That being said, a number of them would have liked more stock on launch day, suggesting that they expect the processors to sell out rather quickly when the buy buttons are activated. All the motherboard manufacturers should be ready to go as well – take a look at our breakdown of the retail motherboard information we could get before launch for a good overview of what to expect this generation. DDR4 manufacturers have been selling the new standard of memory for over a year due to Intel’s high-end X99 platform supporting it, but today will see the introduction of dual channel kits to go with the Skylake platform as well as a number of higher speed modules ready and waiting. ‘Where are the non-K processors?!’ you may ask. Intel tells us that these will be released later in the year, sometime in Q3. As a result, we have to wait and see what range of models come out at that point and we will get a number in to review.[/quote]

Surprisingly it's not that faster than my i7-2600. Still neat to see the technology advance. Guess it's another graphics card upgrade for me then.

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;48383319]Is this finally time to upgrade from a first gen i5? Is AMD on suicide watch or can Zen counter this?[/QUOTE] If anything this is AMD's next opportunity to pull an Athlon and dominate the market for years with Zen and later projects, especially since Intel had to insert Kaby Lake ahead of Cannonlake.

AMD processors aren't terrible, they're just heat and power hungry for the performance they provide. They're still viable if you're on a tight budget at least due to their pricing. (at least they were priced well when I was last building a computer)

[QUOTE=KILLTHIS;48383314]Surprisingly it's not that faster than my i7-2600. Still neat to see the technology advance. Guess it's another graphics card upgrade for me then.[/QUOTE] Moore's law has pretty much run it's course at this point though. Things have been slowing down for a while but they're about to come to a halt if a new process isn't discovered.

As much as I would love to immediately upgrade from a first gen i5. This would require me to get DDR4 ram and they cost shitloads. I'll wait for the ram prices to drop first.

[QUOTE=Scot;48383428]Moore's law has pretty much run it's course at this point though. Things have been slowing down for a while but they're about to come to a halt if a new process isn't discovered.[/QUOTE] IBM has made a 7NM chip with silicon-germanium as the new channel material. Shit IS going to get faster, and smaller, and faster. And smaller.

[QUOTE=adam1172;48383485]As much as I would love to immediately upgrade from a first gen i5. This would require me to get DDR4 ram and they cost shitloads. I'll wait for the ram prices to drop first.[/QUOTE] You can get Z170 motherboards that support DDR3. Which is good because there isn't any benefit to gamers with DDR4.

ddr4 is for now a huge gimmick. At this point unless you're running the slowest ram possible at the highest cas latency at like 6gb or less you're still 100% of the time going to be bottle necked by other parts first. I'm sure there's a physical configuration where ram is actually your bottle neck but I'm not terribly inclined to find it right now. I'd have to crunch the numbers and again, not terribly inclined to do so right now.

Those fucking boxes.

[QUOTE=draugur;48383350]AMD processors aren't terrible, they're just heat and power hungry for the performance they provide. They're still viable if you're on a tight budget at least due to their pricing. (at least they were priced well when I was last building a computer)[/QUOTE] AMD "high-end" processors are crap, and that's coming from a guy who really wants AMD to succeed. The old Thuban and Deneb processors are in many cases as fast as the 8350 - that's really, really bad. Now the APUs I think make a lot more sense and I honestly don't understand that they seemingly aren't more represented in entry-level gaming, but the fact of the matter is that current AMD processors simply aren't up to scratch. I mean we're at a point where if you plan to keep your CPU for a couple of years the power efficiency of the Intel offerings may even catch up to what you saved on the CPU.

[QUOTE=draugur;48383559]ddr4 is for now a huge gimmick. At this point unless you're running the slowest ram possible at the highest cas latency at like 6gb or less you're still 100% of the time going to be bottle necked by other parts first. I'm sure there's a physical configuration where ram is actually your bottle neck but I'm not terribly inclined to find it right now. I'd have to crunch the numbers and again, not terribly inclined to do so right now.[/QUOTE] Faster RAM helps with minimum framerates to a noticeable amount, but that's really it for anything gaming.

[QUOTE=Levelog;48383566]Those fucking boxes.[/QUOTE] Are you saying you like them or hate them? I like them.

[QUOTE=Levelog;48383571]Faster RAM helps with minimum framerates to a noticeable amount, but that's really it for anything gaming.[/QUOTE] Yeah but even then it's not likely that you're going to see too much of a bottleneck from your ram. Your graphics card or CPU are going to be your big ticket points, and considering how some people buy graphics cards (Lets just get the most expensive one and build the rest of the pc with what's left over :downs:), your cpu is more likely to be the issue. [editline]5th August 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=GoDong-DK;48383570]AMD "high-end" processors are crap, and that's coming from a guy who really wants AMD to succeed. The old Thuban and Deneb processors are in many cases as fast as the 8350 - that's really, really bad. Now the APUs I think make a lot more sense and I honestly don't understand that they seemingly aren't more represented in entry-level gaming, but the fact of the matter is that current AMD processors simply aren't up to scratch. I mean we're at a point where if you plan to keep your CPU for a couple of years the power efficiency of the Intel offerings may even catch up to what you saved on the CPU.[/QUOTE] Very true, I never said they were good, just not completely terrible. If you're buying "high-end" processors you're looking at the wrong company and price range anyway. By budgets I really do mean budget. Their APUs are okay, and iirc their APUs are what currently powers the ps4 and xbone. To expand on the ddr4 vs ddr3 thing a bit, you're looking at an average of 3% gain with ddr4 from what I've read. The lowests cas latency ddr4 ram is currently cas 10 so we'll compare prices based off that set because most ddr4 ram is cas 15 from what I saw and no ddr3 ram runs at cas 15 and I want direct comparisons: Corsair DDR4 2133 cas 10 16gb in 4x4gb is $289.99 Your average for ddr3 2133 cas 10 ram in 16gb 4x4gb is about $105. almost $200 for a 3% gain isn't really justifiable to anyone at this point unless you have more money than sense. If you're okay spending $400+ on ram maybe ddr4 is okay for you but that's fucking stupid and you could instead put that extra ~$300 into a better graphics card, motherboard, or cpu.

Still rocking a i7-920 and still don't think it's worth it to upgrade yet.

[QUOTE=Levelog;48383566]Those fucking boxes.[/QUOTE] Some dork on /g/ said they look like a pack of stride gum and now I can't stop seeing that.

[QUOTE=Scot;48383529]You can get Z170 motherboards that support DDR3. Which is good because there isn't any benefit to gamers with DDR4.[/QUOTE] DDR3L Specifically. you can't just drop most ram kits into a Z170 board. Personally would sooner spend another 15 dollars and take the plunge for 8 GB DDR4

[QUOTE=DuCT;48383669]Still rocking a i7-920 and still don't think it's worth it to upgrade yet.[/QUOTE] Rocking an I5-760 but I am still going to wait. If Skylake managed to get a decent performance boost I would have upgraded. But now I might as well wait for AMD Zen to see if Intel wil step up their game.

still no reason to upgrade from a 2500k

I bought my new PC Today. I'm currently on a AMD Athlon X4 860k and its running really nice, no problems what so ever.

[QUOTE=Haskell;48384231]I bought my new PC Today. I'm currently on a AMD Athlon X4 860k and its running really nice, no problems what so ever.[/QUOTE] That's good to know but how is this related to intel or new chips?

[QUOTE=draugur;48383636]Very true, I never said they were good, just not completely terrible. If you're buying "high-end" processors you're looking at the wrong company and price range anyway. By budgets I really do mean budget. Their APUs are okay, and iirc their APUs are what currently powers the ps4 and xbone.[/QUOTE] AMD is sadly only competitive in the small-cheap-desktop-integrated-graphics segment, and let me tell you that is neither the biggest market nor the one with the biggest margins. As soon as integrated graphics become irrelevant (that is, as soon as it makes sense to by a dedicated GPU) AMD is out of the question, and as soon as power efficiency is important (basically any laptop or tablet as well as some desktops), the same is true. AMD basically has no useful products out right now, and it's [I]really[/I] hurting them. Jumping directly to 14nm will surely help a lot with power efficiency and make them relatively more competitive with Intel compared to their recent advances, but it's starting to become too late, really.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;48384253]AMD is sadly only competitive in the small-cheap-desktop-integrated-graphics segment, and let me tell you that is neither the biggest market nor the one with the biggest margins. As soon as integrated graphics become irrelevant (that is, as soon as it makes sense to by a dedicated GPU) AMD is out of the question, and as soon as power efficiency is important (basically any laptop or tablet as well as some desktops), the same is true. AMD basically has no useful products out right now, and it's [I]really[/I] hurting them. Jumping directly to 14nm will surely help a lot with power efficiency and make them relatively more competitive with Intel compared to their recent advances, but it's starting to become too late, really.[/QUOTE] Their budget gaming is pretty strong, but that's literally it. The 760k/860k is actually very competitive for the price.

[QUOTE=wickedplayer494;48383332]If anything this is AMD's next opportunity to pull an Athlon and dominate the market for years with Zen and later projects, especially since Intel had to insert Kaby Lake ahead of Cannonlake.[/QUOTE] AMD isn't going to dominate anything ever again [editline]5th August 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=meppers;48384185]still no reason to upgrade from a 2500k[/QUOTE] ddr4 is no reason to upgrade? maybe not for u

[QUOTE=.Lain;48384499]AMD isn't going to dominate anything ever again [editline]5th August 2015[/editline] ddr4 is no reason to upgrade? maybe not for u[/QUOTE] Not for a strong majority of people, to be fair.

Unless there's a huge performance increase (>30%) there's no point in really upgrading my ram.

[QUOTE=meppers;48384185]still no reason to upgrade from a 2500k[/QUOTE] Yeah I'm really shocked how far my i5 2500k has come.. It's been like, 3 or 4 years I think since I picked mine up and I'm still nowhere near having to upgrade. I can only think of like 2 games that come close to bottlenecking with my CPU and even then, I'm running those at 60FPS (Just not 144FPS, a-bloo-bloo :( )

[QUOTE=.Lain;48384499]AMD isn't going to dominate anything ever again [editline]5th August 2015[/editline] ddr4 is no reason to upgrade? maybe not for u[/QUOTE] As I said, unless you have stupid amounts of money to spend no it isn't at all a reason to upgrade yet. You're not looking at a direct benefit more than an average of 3% for over twice the cost increase. DDR4 is not viable for a very large majority of people other than super rich turbo nerds who don't understand how to crunch numbers and only think that more=better combined with expensive=better. Give it a half a year or more and MAYBE ddr4 will become a viable reason to upgrade, but not yet. [editline]5th August 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=TheJoker;48384532]Unless there's a huge performance increase (>30%) there's no point in really upgrading my ram.[/QUOTE] When the price drops to what ddr3 currently is for the same spec ram then I'd say it's safe to make the change if you're looking to upgrade already, but for now there's no reason to adopt since you can get ddr3 boards and ram for a good price. But upgrading your ram at this point just to have early adopter ddr4 ram is stupid. You're looking at very expensive ram and having to buy a new motherboard just for an average 3% gain in ram speed.

would it even be worth buying this when I have an i5-4670k?

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;48384253]AMD is sadly only competitive in the small-cheap-desktop-integrated-graphics segment, and let me tell you that is neither the biggest market nor the one with the biggest margins. As soon as integrated graphics become irrelevant (that is, as soon as it makes sense to by a dedicated GPU) AMD is out of the question, and as soon as power efficiency is important (basically any laptop or tablet as well as some desktops), the same is true. AMD basically has no useful products out right now, and it's [I]really[/I] hurting them. Jumping directly to 14nm will surely help a lot with power efficiency and make them relatively more competitive with Intel compared to their recent advances, but it's starting to become too late, really.[/QUOTE] Also AMD's graphics cards are good, idk what you're getting at with no good products. Intel has them beat at cpus for sure but their graphics cards are actually pretty decent for their price. The 390x compares to the 980 and is way cheaper, plus it's an 8gb card so you have plenty of space for large textures and the like. For $450 it's a pretty okay choice.