Who is skylake aimed at?

[I_am_not_Carabia83]

So which is better then? A Skylake CPU or an x99 like the 5820 or 5930K?

The reality is that for gaming in the real world the improvements will be marginal. That's why you could get away with an i5 at the minute. But for anything above and beyond gaming X99 is without a doubt a better option.

I think there are many reasons that really depend on an individual as the best path to go. For someone who has a usage of 90% of gaming and are on a budget then stretching for X99 is pointless, when an i5 will do the same job.

Most people justify spending less when for their usage spending less will do the job, i.e gaming. But the fact that you can spec an X99 build with a 5820k for the same price roughly as a skylake build gives little reason to go with skylake in my opinion.

If gaming was the main usage I'd be looking at saving money and going for a 6600k skylake though, but anyone looking at a top end skylake build so 6700k, ROG tier board etc would be mad to go skylake in my opinion. The top end Z170 boards are priced the same as X99 boards lol.

For someone like you with a 4770k buying skylake will offer no real improvement in gaming, yes benchmarking will give you higher scores, but in the real world I would be you'd notice no real difference.

A 5930k is the route I'd go, more future proof in my opinion plus in any non gaming related tasks you'd definitely notice an improvement. Although ultimately the best improvement for gaming would be to just buy yourself another 980, that will give you a bump bigger than any new cpu and motherboard would, even if you went and splashed out on a 5960x.

edit:you've already got two already didn't notice.

 

[andy_mk3]

Certainly gives no interest to me. I think my 2600k has got a couple of years left before an upgrade is going to give any noticeable difference.

 

[Panos]

Intel have bumped the price up £50 and removed the cooler, who exactly are they thinking will buy skylake when it's now in the same price bracket as a low end x99 system?

The sort of people who buy the next Intel product every time.

Intel has only to compete with themselves, and unfortunately if AMD ZenCore isnt at least in par of a Haswel core, don't expect much from Intel.

They will "refurbish" the same tech for years to come without competition.

And you can see it right now. Since 2009 with the 2600K, how much difference is between the rest 4770K, 4790K or a 6700K on day to day use and gaming? Negligible that doesn't justify the costs of the upgrades.

 

[Trifid]

It's of no interest to me too. I don't get the integrated GPUs for this side of the market? I'd rather have more cores.

 

[Nocky24]

Certainly gives no interest to me. I think my 2600k has got a couple of years left before an upgrade is going to give any noticeable difference.

I'm the same. Skylake isn't tempting me at all, however an X99/5820k is, but then for pure gaming, I'd be questioning what it was worth to me...

Guess I'll sit tight for now unless I see an insanely good deal on an X99 setup.

 

[jigger]

Intel has only to compete with themselves, and unfortunately if AMD ZenCore isnt at least in par of a Haswel core, don't expect much from Intel.

Look how that worked out for Intel last time.

If AMD offer me an overclockable 6-8 core desktop chip priced around Haswell and with Sandbridge performance per core, I'm upgrading 3 possibly 4 machines and my current i7 3770K gaming rig is definitely demoted to the kids room/given away to family.

 

[Brian18741]

If building a new gaming only system, is there any point going with skylake over devils canyon?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'll be buying it then, but I want ITX so x99 was never on the cards.

There are mini-ITX X99 motherboards and they cost around the same as the only Z170 one available currently!

 

[I_am_not_Carabia83]

If building a new gaming only system, is there any point going with skylake over devils canyon?

Yes, it offers better performance regardless of how slight.

For a purely gaming rig an i5 6600k with 2 sticks of ddr4 ram and z170 motherboard won't cost much more if anything than a equivalent z97 build with a 4690k.

I wouldn't buy an end of line socket brand new now. Obviously there's nothing wrong with the performance of haswell, there's actually little incentive for anyone on haswell to upgrade to skylake, however building new today? I'd never buy haswell, unless I was buying second hand to save money or if the new prices drop down enough to make it worthwhile. But 30-40 quid difference for a newer cpu? It's a no brainer.

 

[altich88]

Yes, it offers better performance regardless of how slight.

For a purely gaming rig an i5 6600k with 2 sticks of ddr4 ram and z170 motherboard won't cost much more if anything than a equivalent z97 build with a 4690k.

I wouldn't buy an end of line socket brand new now. Obviously there's nothing wrong with the performance of haswell, there's actually little incentive for anyone on haswell to upgrade to skylake, however building new today? I'd never buy haswell, unless I was buying second hand to save money or if the new prices drop down enough to make it worthwhile. But 30-40 quid difference for a newer cpu? It's a no brainer.

This. I was thinking of a Haswell i5 build, but I can't put anything together that saves a significant amount of money compared to the new tech. Seems silly to spend so much on the old platform at the mid-high/i5-gamer level.

 

[FoxEye]

Kerching!


Its all about the money,money baby!

"Remember the 90s? When we were selling CPUs for £500 each? Those were good times. Let's do that again."

"OK, then. It's not like we're going to lose any market share. If they don't buy Skylake they'll just buy our even more expensive chips."

"And have you seen the price of GPUs lately? People are buying multiple units at £600 each! Our CPUs are /way/ underpriced..."

 

[wapcatlet]

I think the i5 6600k is a perfect upgrade for my 6 year old Lynnfield i5 750.
I will be using it primarily for gaming. I will give it a month or two to see whether the prices of the CPU and/or the Z170 motherboards drop a bit.

 

[Mr C]

This. I was thinking of a Haswell i5 build, but I can't put anything together that saves a significant amount of money compared to the new tech. Seems silly to spend so much on the old platform at the mid-high/i5-gamer level.

I was doing just this a second ago to see what would be best for me.

I'm thinking of upgrading my old i7 920 to either a 4690k or a 6600k and since everything in my pc is new aside from the cpu/mobo/ram.

4690k

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £257.98
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £47.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £345.55 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).



Skylake 6600k

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI - Intel Core i5 6600K Bundle **£20 Saving** £303.97
1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2A2400C14) £55.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £399.55 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).



If I remember correctly the 4690k was the sweet spot for gaming on a budget too. Just looking at this seems like the 6600k Is a better choice for the average gamer who don't need the extra power for anything else. I guess you could argue that without the heatsink you could get the 4690k for £80 cheaper.

 

[Orangey]

I wouldn't buy an end of line socket brand new now.

They're all EOL sockets these days. You're buying a new Intel CPU you're buying a new socket.

 

[I_am_not_Carabia83]

They're all EOL sockets these days. You're buying a new Intel CPU you're buying a new socket.

You know what I meant.

I apologise for the way I worded it. Plus that's not entirely true, broadwell will fit in 1150 z97/h97 boards for example.

And look at socket 2011, there have been various cpus released.

Either way my point still stands, for a similar price I see no reason at all to go for haswell over skylake if buying new.

 

[Grimley]

These days (with the advent of SSD) I'm more interested in TDP & energy usage than how much quicker the latest tech is. Well, ever since Haswell plays back at 23.976 whereas previous generations couldn't. 4K/60p/HEVC is another matter though. I may well upgrade when this becomes available cheaply.

That or I'm 'forced to upgrade' when a family member decides they want an 'upgrade' & they get my hand-me-downs.

 

[BaronVonDuncs]

The reality is that for gaming in the real world the improvements will be marginal. That's why you could get away with an i5 at the minute. But for anything above and beyond gaming X99 is without a doubt a better option.

I think there are many reasons that really depend on an individual as the best path to go. For someone who has a usage of 90% of gaming and are on a budget then stretching for X99 is pointless, when an i5 will do the same job.

Most people justify spending less when for their usage spending less will do the job, i.e gaming. But the fact that you can spec an X99 build with a 5820k for the same price roughly as a skylake build gives little reason to go with skylake in my opinion.

If gaming was the main usage I'd be looking at saving money and going for a 6600k skylake though, but anyone looking at a top end skylake build so 6700k, ROG tier board etc would be mad to go skylake in my opinion. The top end Z170 boards are priced the same as X99 boards lol.

For someone like you with a 4770k buying skylake will offer no real improvement in gaming, yes benchmarking will give you higher scores, but in the real world I would be you'd notice no real difference.

A 5930k is the route I'd go, more future proof in my opinion plus in any non gaming related tasks you'd definitely notice an improvement. Although ultimately the best improvement for gaming would be to just buy yourself another 980, that will give you a bump bigger than any new cpu and motherboard would, even if you went and splashed out on a 5960x.

edit:you've already got two already didn't notice.

Thanks very much for the advice that is very helpful.

 

[Randell]

Yes, it offers better performance regardless of how slight.

For a purely gaming rig an i5 6600k with 2 sticks of ddr4 ram and z170 motherboard won't cost much more if anything than a equivalent z97 build with a 4690k.

I wouldn't buy an end of line socket brand new now. Obviously there's nothing wrong with the performance of haswell, there's actually little incentive for anyone on haswell to upgrade to skylake, however building new today? I'd never buy haswell, unless I was buying second hand to save money or if the new prices drop down enough to make it worthwhile. But 30-40 quid difference for a newer cpu? It's a no brainer.

This..

I cant believe how ridiculously negative people all over the internet are being. Of course there's no point upgrading from Haswell. There rarely has recently (last 7-8 years) been a compelling performance reason to upgrade from one generation to the next.

Everyone is comparing i7 6700K to X99 set-ups. Cost wise that is a difficult comparison, but almost everyone seems to be forgetting i5 6600K isn't that much dearer (£5-£10) than i5 4690K and you are getting a longer lasting platform.

For someone like me, who never saw the need to get rid of my Q9550 when Nehalem launched, and went to upgrade last year, but saw DDR3 was on its way out, this is the right time for my upgrade. I get these benefits too;

DDR4
USB3
M.2

 

[I_am_not_Carabia83]

This..

I cant believe how ridiculously negative people all over the internet are being.

You know what I find funny about that?

We used to be at a stage where one of the "cons" about pc was having to upgrade regularly, nowadays if you buy smart you can have a rig that lasts a few years and people still complain.

I can guarantee if every release was a massive jump in improvement, people would likely complain too.

 

[Guest2]

I would be interested to see Skylake vs Haswell vs Haswell-e chips when encoding and playing games on the same system.

Just for reference my [email protected] scores about the same as 6700k@stock at least in Cinebench R15. The [email protected] pulls aways to 1035