INTEL Core i7 6700K –
SKYLAKE Revealed
I
t’s finally here. INTEL’s Skylake-S
family of CPUs. To be specific, only
two CPUs have shown up thus far,
with the rest expected to arrive later.
Those CPUs though, are of little to no
concern to us. What we want to know
is how these CPUs stack up to the
presently available options. After all,
DDR4 isn’t new (X99 saw to introduce
it nearly a year ago), but for most of
us it’ll be the first time we get to use
the new DRAM standard.
If you’ve not read all the technical
details regarding the CPU, more
specifically the Core i7 6700K, then
head on over to AnandTech for an
insightful and detailed run down of
the CPU.
I’ll not be covering that here, but
what I do want to bring you are my
impressions of the CPU. The
assumption is most of you reading
this are technically minded, but even
more so you want to know how this
stacks up against what INTEL has in
the form of the Core i7 5820K. This
is an important CPU and comparison
because the price difference between
these CPUs is $53. That is about
22 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015
the price of a triple-A gaming title
these days. As such, the question of
value plays an important role in the
analysis of this CPU and more so the
platform as a whole.
Right now, a high end Z170 gaming
motherboard (I swear vendors need
to let this verb go) will set you back
around $300 . Consider that this is
about the same price for a mid-range
gaming motherboard for the X99
chipset and you have an uphill battle
for the 6700K even before we consider
performance, overclocking, etc.
Mind you this isn’t to say this CPU is
disappointing. It is to the contrary , but
be aware that there just may be an
alternative CPU for you within the
INTEL Family should the 6700K prove
underwhelming for your needs.
What should also be consdiered is
that, the way games and perhaps
even 3D benchmarks are these days.
It’s rather difficult to find a
generational change that increases
performance in leaps and bounds.
This is simply because the settings at
which most high end gaming takes
place; the
bottleneck is the GPU and not H