Haswell vs Skylake

[Will Fantom]

I plan on building a new PC for around september this year. Skylake CPU's and Motherboards are apparently being released in August and it sounds tempting to go for. I was looking at spending about £1000 ($1600) and getting an i7-4790k. Would it be worth going for Skylake or would the performance boost from it cost too much?

 

[turkey3_scratch]

There's a pattern in the different generations of intel CPUs - every next generation incrementally gains 10% more performance. Just like how Ivy bridge was 10% more powerful than Sandy bridge, and how Haswell was 10% more powerful than Ivy Bridge, my guess is that Skylake will be about 10% more powerful than Haswell - a negligible improvement (Broadwell kind of focused on mobile CPUs, so there's barely a difference in performance as far as I know).

You are forgetting that Broadwell is a 10% increase also (actually seems more like 13% once OC to that of a Haswell) so Skylake should be a solid 20+% increase over Haswell.

 

[Nextg_Rival]

I am not really a big fan of Broadwell, TBH I think it's kind of a waste.

 

[Pyre]

I am not really a big fan of Broadwell, TBH I think it's kind of a waste.

Haha nice of you to see so, i agree 100%. The broadwell will most likey be 10% or less difference to haswell. Only sandybridge users should go for it. Ivy bridge users don't even need to update to broadwell since they perform closer to haswells.

 

[Pyre]

There's a pattern in the different generations of intel CPUs - every next generation incrementally gains 10% more performance. Just like how Ivy bridge was 10% more powerful than Sandy bridge, and how Haswell was 10% more powerful than Ivy Bridge, my guess is that Skylake will be about 10% more powerful than Haswell - a negligible improvement (Broadwell kind of focused on mobile CPUs, so there's barely a difference in performance as far as I know).

You are forgetting that Broadwell is a 10% increase also (actually seems more like 13% once OC to that of a Haswell) so Skylake should be a solid 20+% increase over Haswell.

Skylake 20% more, I think it is v.possible but intel won't do it. They must know that even if its 10% or less people will still go for skylake, some haswell and ivybridge users could be fooled to go for skylake and it won't even be worth the upgrade. 20% is a high assumption. Lets look at haswell and ivybridge in fact they dont even have a gap between themselves to consider as a competition to each other.

 

[g-unit1111]

Skylake 20% more, I think it is v.possible but intel won't do it. They must know that even if its 10% or less people will still go for skylake, some haswell and ivybridge users could be fooled to go for skylake and it won't even be worth the upgrade. 20% is a high assumption. Lets look at haswell and ivybridge in fact they dont even have a gap between themselves to consider as a competition to each other.

I'm interested in seeing what Z170 boards bring to the table. With the new Z170 boards that were debuted at Computex last week from Asrock, EVGA and Gigabyte it looks like there's a lot of interesting stuff coming - USB Type C, DDR4, more PCI 3.0 lanes, dual Gigabit Ethernet, looks very promising.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

There's a pattern in the different generations of intel CPUs - every next generation incrementally gains 10% more performance. Just like how Ivy bridge was 10% more powerful than Sandy bridge, and how Haswell was 10% more powerful than Ivy Bridge, my guess is that Skylake will be about 10% more powerful than Haswell - a negligible improvement (Broadwell kind of focused on mobile CPUs, so there's barely a difference in performance as far as I know).

You are forgetting that Broadwell is a 10% increase also (actually seems more like 13% once OC to that of a Haswell) so Skylake should be a solid 20+% increase over Haswell.

Skylake 20% more, I think it is v.possible but intel won't do it. They must know that even if its 10% or less people will still go for skylake, some haswell and ivybridge users could be fooled to go for skylake and it won't even be worth the upgrade. 20% is a high assumption. Lets look at haswell and ivybridge in fact they dont even have a gap between themselves to consider as a competition to each other.

Broadwell is only considered a waste because the lowered clock rates counterbalance the IPC increase and make it practically equal to Haswell, and Skylake is coming too soon so no one wants to go LGA 1150 again, they'd rather wait for the next socket.

When the clock rates are equal Broadwell is a 10% improvement over Haswell. The question is if Intel is going to actually have lower stock clock rates on the Skylake processors than Haswell. Broadwell clearly introduced Intel's new ideology of actually lowering the clock rates of their processors while raising IPC (but not enough), so hopefully if Skylake ups the IPC another 10% and then also matches the Haswell clock rates it will for certain be about a 20% increase.

 

[Pyre]

Wow...This is still going on. It should just be closed man. I seriously don't think intel is going to make Skylake that much better. I understand Broadwell is coming and is a step down from Skylake causing one to think Skylake is going to be that much better than Haswell. But im sorry I am going to be negative, INTEL IS NOT GOING TO MAKE SKYLAKE THAT GREAT. Intel is company that has had good rep...yes. They themselves know that the loyalty they have in their assest will still remain high even if a successor generation is not that better than the predessor generation, meaning customers get jumpy for BS. SKYLAKE is not going to be that much better. Look at Haswell and Ivybridge hardly a gap, you have to wait at least two gens for the newer gen to be better than the older.

 

[Nextg_Rival]

Well, Skylake gets a die shrink to 11nm (I think), so we'll see how that works out at least.

 

[g-unit1111]

Wow...This is still going on. It should just be closed man. I seriously don't think intel is going to make Skylake that much better. I understand Broadwell is coming and is a step down from Skylake causing one to think Skylake is going to be that much better than Haswell. But im sorry I am going to be negative, INTEL IS NOT GOING TO MAKE SKYLAKE THAT GREAT. Intel is company that has had good rep...yes. They themselves know that the loyalty they have in their assest will still remain high even if a successor generation is not that better than the predessor generation, meaning customers get jumpy for BS. SKYLAKE is not going to be that much better. Look at Haswell and Ivybridge hardly a gap, you have to wait at least two gens for the newer gen to be better than the older.

Why? No reason to close a perfectly good discussion. You can say "Skylake is not going to be that great" all you want, but to quote the Dude, that's like your opinion man.

 

[USAFRet]

And for the 99% of the planet that is not on the "must upgrade every single cycle" rollercoaster, the cumulative differences between 2 or 3 iterations is just fine.

If building new? No reason not to get the current one, whatever that may be when you buy. (if it fits in your budget)
Currently have something that works for you? Get off that roller coaster.

 

[g-unit1111]

And for the 99% of the planet that is not on the "must upgrade every single cycle" rollercoaster, the cumulative differences between 2 or 3 iterations is just fine.

If building new? No reason not to get the current one, whatever that may be when you buy. (if it fits in your budget)
Currently have something that works for you? Get off that roller coaster.

I generally upgrade every other generation. I'll reuse a case until it no longer works or I need new functions (like USB Type C for instance) and I'll use power supplies until they're no longer functional. I think motherboards and CPUs should only be upgraded every 3 - 4 years and GPUs should only be upgraded every year and a half or so.

 

[synphul]

Broadwell shrunk the die from haswell's 22nm to 14nm which is why it got delayed so long. Intel had some issues with getting the die shrunk so small that set them behind schedule. Skylake being a 'tock' cycle is a better candidate to be a performance increase, same as sandy and haswell, rather than broadwell.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Most every previous tock has been 10-15% performance increase. No reason to think Skylake will be any different. Considering there are in reality, a tick and a tock between Skylake and Haswell Refresh, you're actually getting the decrease in power consumption, the 5% or so increase in performance that generally accompanies the tick, plus the 10-15% increase that comes with the tock. So potentially you get a more efficient chip that could have as much as a 20% performance increase over Haswell Refresh. What more could you want in an upgrade?

 

[synphul]

Ticks and tocks are actual upgrade cycles, the tick being a reform of the die/efficiency and tock being an architecture improvement. Haswell refresh was just that, a refresh since it did neither. It didn't shrink the die, it was exactly haswell re-released with a slightly different tim material in an attempt to improve thermals and a very slight tweak to existing clock speeds. This is just my opinion but I think the reason for the unusual 'refresh' release was to keep things going during the delay in place of broadwell since it was held up. Broadwell was supposed to be released instead of any refresh cpu's but it wasn't ready yet.

Haswell refresh being identical to haswell with only minor differences, not enough to define it as a 'tick' means it's still part of the haswell 'tock' cycle. With ivy being a 'tick' and broadwell being a 'tick', skylake being a 'tock' it indicates all haswells are part of the 'tock' cycle whether original or refresh/d.c.

 

[Karnivore]

I went Haswell-E last month and i'm glad I did. Skylake sounds extremely underwhelming and more appealing to someone looking for a new laptop.

 

[fatgangsta]

I am seeing stuff on Kit Guru saying there something wrong with the i don't know but here the article
http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-core-i7-6700k-skylake-de-lidded-small-die-and-ngptim-found/ maybe i am geting alittle head over myself but what that says sounds bad to me

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's nothing new, and to me at least, not unexpected either. Corporate fat cats only, and I mean only, care about profits. They know the product will sell either way, so if they can cut costs by NOT using a higher end thermal interface or even costlier soldering, that's what their likely to do unless and until it proves to be problematic for normal use.

 

[Nextg_Rival]

TBH I really strongly hope that AMD make a couple of genius breakthroughs or something, so that they can challenge NVidia and Intel so then we can finally get a competitive market with normal prices, regular product improvements (no more rebrands please) and an end to the hardware stagnation that's resulted in GPUs and CPUs that are many years old now being able to compete with the brand "new" products.

 

[fatgangsta]

I know still sounds stupid that's all they'd have to do to it is add solder just to make it better isnt that the cheapest thing on the processor

 

[USAFRet]

I know still sounds stupid that's all they'd have to do to it is add solder just to make it better isnt that the cheapest thing on the processor

Add solder? Pretty sure it's a little more complex than that.

 

[hyperdunk]

I've actually got the same question. I'm planning to build a new gaming rig right now and I'm torn between the i5-4690/k or the i5-6600/k (my old one had a C2Q Q8400 so either will be an upgrade nonetheless). I've been scouring the net for answers but it just made me more confused. Some people in reddit are saying to go with Skylake since its future proofing, it has significant "tock" performance gains, and so on, but the others are saying to choose Haswell because there aren't much gains as believed, ddr4's are much more expensive but only marginally better if not equal to ddr3s, save the money and buy bigger GPUs instead, etcetc.

The 6600k is $50 more expensive than the 4690k where I live ($290 vs. $240). Which one should I go for?

Also, the reason why the "/k" is because I'm not sure if I am going to overclock at all since I don't know how (but I'm open to trying if it isn't difficult to do.)

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I've actually got the same question. I'm planning to build a new gaming rig right now and I'm torn between the i5-4690/k or the i5-6600/k (my old one had a C2Q Q8400 so either will be an upgrade nonetheless). I've been scouring the net for answers but it just made me more confused. Some people in reddit are saying to go with Skylake since its future proofing, it has significant "tock" performance gains, and so on, but the others are saying to choose Haswell because there aren't much gains as believed, ddr4's are much more expensive but only marginally better if not equal to ddr3s, save the money and buy bigger GPUs instead, etcetc.

The 6600k is $50 more expensive than the 4690k where I live ($290 vs. $240). Which one should I go for?

Also, the reason why the "/k" is because I'm not sure if I am going to overclock at all since I don't know how (but I'm open to trying if it isn't difficult to do.)

The 6600K is not worth the $50 over the 4690K, nor is the I7-6700K worth it yet (considering there is a 6-core I7 CPU for $50 less).

However, i'm not sure where you get $50 from. Where is the 4690K $200? On Amazon it is $230. For $20 more the 6600K is worth it, albeit you have to pay more for the DDR4 and such.

 

[hyperdunk]

I've actually got the same question. I'm planning to build a new gaming rig right now and I'm torn between the i5-4690/k or the i5-6600/k (my old one had a C2Q Q8400 so either will be an upgrade nonetheless). I've been scouring the net for answers but it just made me more confused. Some people in reddit are saying to go with Skylake since its future proofing, it has significant "tock" performance gains, and so on, but the others are saying to choose Haswell because there aren't much gains as believed, ddr4's are much more expensive but only marginally better if not equal to ddr3s, save the money and buy bigger GPUs instead, etcetc.

The 6600k is $50 more expensive than the 4690k where I live ($290 vs. $240). Which one should I go for?

Also, the reason why the "/k" is because I'm not sure if I am going to overclock at all since I don't know how (but I'm open to trying if it isn't difficult to do.)

The 6600K is not worth the $50 over the 4690K, nor is the I7-6700K worth it yet (considering there is a 6-core I7 CPU for $50 less).

However, i'm not sure where you get $50 from. Where is the 4690K $200? On Amazon it is $230. For $20 more the 6600K is worth it, albeit you have to pay more for the DDR4 and such.

I'm not from the US so the prices of new releases are always inflated here (I'm from Asia), and buying from Amazon will definitely be more expensive with the shipping charges and all so it's not an option.

I'm not sure where you got the $200 from? The $240 for the 4690K here is the same in Newegg but yeah the 6600K is ~$40 more expensive in my country (unless if apparently I buy it with a Gigabyte MB, which in that case the price drops to $250 but I don't want to be binded with only that option.. or is it still a good thing?)

So with that being said, should I go with the 4690 instead? And should I get the unlocked one or not? The former costs $18 more.

Since it's been almost a month since release I'm hoping for benchmarking test results to start popping up so that we can see if Skylake's performance improvement is actually significant or not. I was hoping that its being a "tock" upgrade it would be worth it over Haswell.

 

[almostageek]

I plan on building a new PC for around september this year. Skylake CPU's and Motherboards are apparently being released in August and it sounds tempting to go for. I was looking at spending about £1000 ($1600) and getting an i7-4790k. Would it be worth going for Skylake or would the performance boost from it cost too much?

For your price range it would be best to pick the i7-6700K. As the transistors get smaller compared to its predecessor, temperature gets lower under the same burden, clock speed and voltage, so you can OC better and squeeze out better performance compared to i7-4790K. The price increase because of the motherboard and RAM should stay affordable to you

 

[GT von]

The 2500K is a killer, I think that I might even include it in a future rig I make in the next 1-2 years if I get the money and the prices are old. It's sad that the industry is kind of dead - AMD can't progress at all, Intel don't want to progress because selling CPUs with minor improvements already makes them more than enough money, AMD ATI and NVidia are both rebranding video cards instead of creating new products, with NVidia lowering their performance and boosting their prices on purpose... Old components seem like the name of the game for the next several years, at the very least.

You are terribly misinformed there.