Intel Skylake Questions

RealityGap

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Feb 4, 2015
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First, is there any reason not to buy the Skylake i7 6700k over the i5 6600k if you are going to be using it for gaming?

Second: How long should I wait for Z170 motherboards with their new tech and the subsequent Tom's Hardware reviews of the new Z170 motherboards?

Third: Do I also have to upgrade my Ram? I've seen that mentioned a few places and I didn't know that would be an issue. Does it simply also support DDR4, or does it only support DDR4?

Any and all help is appreciated, thank you.

Current Specs (just in case they are needed):
Processor: AMD FX-8350
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming
Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz (2x 4GB) Dual Channel Memory
Power Supply: 500 Watt Corsair CX500 PSU
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99X (SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0)
SSD: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC SSD
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 32MB Cache HDD
Operating System: MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
 
Solution
Looking at the Anand review.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/22

All of the recent i5 and i7 chips perform around the same. There is the exception like Grid, but there isn't really any difference. Speaking of which, do you really need to upgrade? The 8350 should be the same as well. Grid is worst case, and the A10 gets almost 46FPS. Yes the Intels are 2x+, but perhaps the 8350 scores higher? Otherwise in all the other games there isn't really a difference in any of the CPUs. So spending that much money would really be a waste.

I'm sure we'll see reviews starting soon, I'd expect a large selection of reviews from all sites (Meaning not just Toms.) within 3-4mo...
1. Yes and no. Yes as it costs more for just a bit more performance. No because it will overall last longer due to higher overall performance.

2. I would wait at least 2 months to see what comes out but if I were doing a build I would probably grab an Asus Maximus Formula VIII when it is out because I have the Formula VI and love it.

3. Skylake has the ability to support both DDR4 and DDR3. I am going to assume that only low-mid end Z170 boards will have support for both for transitioning but higher end Z170 boards are already showing only DDR4 support on them so if you want a nicer board, more than likely you will need DDR4 RAM.

If you do upgrade I would also suggest going to a better PSU. The one you have is not really good for a gaming system. I would go with at least a Corsair RM series or better or a Seasonic/EVGA/XFX.
 
Once games are optimised with hyperthreading that would be the main difference between the i5 and the i7 other than the clock speed.
The ASUS Z170-A seems pretty solid, probably still like the Z97 counterparts, at least a 4 true phases on the motherboard.
For now it seems Z170 only support DDR4. CPU can support both DDR3 and 4. So yes you would need to buy DDR4 ram if you move to skylake.
 
Skylake will mostly only support DDR4 RAM. Some lower end boards may allow the use of DDR3L, which is low voltage DDR3 that is only really found on Servers and some laptops, your Corsair Vengeance sticks would not qualify.

DirectX 12 will supposedly improve multithreading for games, so hyperthreading may become beneficial in the future for gaming, but it's hard to say for certain, it depends on how developers choose to implement it.

Z170 offers a lot more high speed connectivity compared to Z97 if you're considering a switch to Intel, the Z170 chipset has more PCI-E lanes coming off of it, and they all run at 3.0 speed. This allows things like running 2 way SLI or Crossfire while also plugging in a high performance SSD via PCI-E or an M2 slot without having one of those devices throttled due to lack of PCI-E bandwidth.
 
Looking at the Anand review.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/22

All of the recent i5 and i7 chips perform around the same. There is the exception like Grid, but there isn't really any difference. Speaking of which, do you really need to upgrade? The 8350 should be the same as well. Grid is worst case, and the A10 gets almost 46FPS. Yes the Intels are 2x+, but perhaps the 8350 scores higher? Otherwise in all the other games there isn't really a difference in any of the CPUs. So spending that much money would really be a waste.

I'm sure we'll see reviews starting soon, I'd expect a large selection of reviews from all sites (Meaning not just Toms.) within 3-4mo.

If my memory from this morning is correct, both the new chips support either. At stock settings they perform around the same so no worries about upgrading to DDR4.
 
Solution


Hi,

Hyperthreading works by feeding the CPU's cores through scheduling data to minimise wastage. E.G. rendering a video, as is 'finalised' data which can be scheduled logically.

I don't know how games can be optimised, essentially my CPU cannot guess what data needs rendering next because i'm a human being and i might choose to look left and shoot or look right and shoot in a FPS.

Please help me understand how games will utilise HT? i know battlefield uses HT, somehow, however it is heavily documented to have positive and adverse effects.