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  • CaedenV - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    Glad 14nm is finally getting under control. I am debating about picking up one of their next gen 14nm chips (cannonlake?) next year. But then again, my 'ol 2600 is plugging right along... I may just hang on to it until a workload comes along that it finally can't do.
  • inighthawki - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    Cannonlake was delayed and Kaby Lake is the new successor to Skylake.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake

    Honestly outside of a handful of specialized tasks, a 2600 should still see a lot of life left in it. If you were to upgrade, I would say do so for pretty much every reason except CPU performance (e.g. upgrading MB, RAM, and all the next gen controllers and whatnot)
  • revanchrist - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    It wasn't delayed, it's the new Intel Tick-Tock cycle to milk the cow to the fullest.
    14nm: Broadwell, Skylake, Kabylake
    10nm: Cannonlake, Icelake, Tigerlake
    Basically the first 7nm processor from Intel will arrive in 2020.
  • Murloc - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    it's a technological hurdle it's not just about milking the cow.
    Also most people do not upgrade every generation now and they will slow down even more if there is no significant progress, so I don't see the milking.
  • FunBunny2 - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    -- it's a technological hurdle it's not just about milking the cow.

    back in the goode olde dayes of the Wintel monopoly, M$'s ever more bloated OS and Office drove businesses, and their home workers, to upgrade machines in lock-step with them. gamers are a very much smaller set, so the heady days of monopolies' rent haven't returned. a small finger in the leaking dike of "good enough" is the best they can hope for.
  • Vlad_Da_Great - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    MSFT will stop the support for the older CPU models, so now upgrades will be forced not by CPU capabilities but software support and drivers availability.
    32nm should be obsolete pretty soon, and 22nm chips might come under sweeping backward motion in the next couple of years.
  • extide - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    When MSFT stops supporting a processor, that does NOT mean that processor will no longer work. What they mean is they are not making any specific optimizations for those older processor anymore.

    It's like with Skylake only supported on Windows 10 -- that means only windows 10 gets speed shift and special support for Skylake, NOT that skylake will not work on older OS's. It may be difficult to find drivers but you can still use older versions of windows. Hell you could still run windows 3.11 on Skylake if you wanted...
  • ITDoe - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    Skylake support is *not* limited to Win10 nor is HWP (Speed Shift). Windows 8.1 supports HWP as well and has Skylake CPU drivers.

    Furthermore HWP is *not* enabled for Desktop Skylake CPUs in any Windows version, not even in Win10. It is only enabled for Mobile Skylake CPUs but not for e.g. the regular i7-6700(K) ones. Which means that Win10 currently doesn't give you any advantage whatsoever if you've got a Desktop Skylake system.
  • barleyguy - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    This is absolutely true. They are not "milking the cow" to any significant extent. 10 nm still has hurdles that haven't been overcome. It might come out on time (or based on the next estimate after any previous delays), or might be delayed further.
  • Gigaplex - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    It's the new Tick-Tock-Tock cycle because of the continuous delays.
  • Hubb1e - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    As an enthusiast I keep wanting to upgrade just for the fun of it, but like you my 2600k is humming right along at 4.7ghz and there's not a single thing I can throw at it that makes it feel inadequate. It's a genuine first world problem.
  • Impulses - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    Performance gains have accumulated pretty decently over the last few gens... Obviously you won't see any of it on GPU bound games but for anyone that does anything intensive outside of gaming a jump up from Sandy Bridge can be well justified.

    That being said, if it was for the performance bump alone (on photo work and light video editing) I probably wouldn't have made the jump... But I gained HT (had a 2500K) as well as an M.2 slot (which I'm using), USB 3.1 / Type C, etc.
  • Samus - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    Intel really nailed it with Sandy Bridge. Nehalem started the movement but Sandy was the icing on the cake. Both platforms are undeniably still relevant because it's been ho hum ever since, even in the HEPC sector. The 6 core triple channel Nehalem's on x58 only lack 20% of the clock for clock IPC of the Haswell-E CPU's and the only real platform advantage is PCI-E 3.0 with more lanes...and perhaps USB 3.0 which is easily added with an add on card.

    I don't blame anybody for holding onto Sandy Bridge, unless they are ultra sensitive about their power bill or battery life in a laptop.
  • Gunbuster - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    $320 at micro center
  • Eden-K121D - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    What do think will kaby lake bring over skylake
  • gammaray - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    "On January 15, 2016, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be the only supported Windows platform for Kaby Lake processors.[9]" from wiki

    for real? i will keep my 4770k for a long time i guess.
  • Murloc - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    or, you know, just use linux if you're so worried about teh spyware, and just use W10 for the programs that need it.
  • jimbo2779 - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    Obviously you will be able to use Kaby lake and future CPUs on previous versions of Windows.

    What that is saying is that any newer CPU instruction sets will not be supported so you will not be getting the benefit that they may bring, you will still benefit from the architectural advancements and improvements to current instruction sets.

    Honestly I am amazed that anyone would think that newer processors just flat out would not work in older versions of Windows like MS would intentionally stop them from working. That would be commercial suicide.
  • HollyDOL - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    That's like expecting you'd get everything from your shiny new NVMe super turbo SSD 2.5GBps in... Windows XP. I am not suprised Microsoft doesn't want to spend too much effort on backporting new things in old OSes. Not mentioning architectural issues (old systems simply were not designed to something like that), nobody wants to do that, devs punished with the glorious tasks of backporting the new thing in 'that old piece of ....' get frustrated and are more tempted to change job, not to mention how much resources it costs.
  • yuhong - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    To be honest I think you are better off staying with Haswell/Broadwell if you still need Win7 anyway.
  • Samus - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    They will probably, if history repeats itself, focus on the iGPU more than IPC. So in other words, nothing for gamers or business machines. I suspect if VR takes off, Intel is going to put serious muscle into graphics.
  • Gigaplex - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    Business machines are actually likely to get some benefit from the iGPU, since they're more likely to use it than gaming machines.
  • jasonelmore - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    Skylake E is coming later this year, not Broadwell E.. Look at the roadmap
  • killeak - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    Broadwell-E is going to be released in August (as HEDT, I think the Xeons are already on the market), not sure Skylake-E will make it this year.
  • stephenbrooks - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    I thought the Haswell-E chip being numbered 5820K was weird because all the other Haswells were 4xxx, but a quick Wikipedia search shows that they've been doing this off-by-one thing ever since Sandy Bridge (2xxx for normal desktop, 38xx and 39xx for HEDT). Who knows if they'll continue this for Broadwell-E and Skylake-E (6820K, 7820K?).
  • extide - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    Yes the HEDT platform has always been 1 digit higher for some reason, and I am sure they will continue that until they move to an entirely new naming scheme.
  • cdmoore74 - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    I got in while prices were still reasonable. Paid $329 for my 6700k with motherboard back on 11/9/2015 at microcenter. Even got $20 off a 512GB evo 850.
    Now I'm waiting to get the 1080 at $599.
  • Impulses - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    You could get the 6700K for a reasonable price early on if you played ball or gamed the system (as far as Newegg's combos), that's what I ended up doing, if I had to wait this long I would've just bought a 5820K.
  • SunnyNW - Friday, May 20, 2016 - link

    Can anyone please explain to me the reasoning/rational behind fabs continuing to print the die(mask) all the way to the edge of the wafer even though they are incomplete/non-functional?
  • jasonelmore - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    cheaper to make, wafers are round and after all, they are printing these and the extra amount of material is trivial. anytime you do patterning, your gonna cover the whole canvas.
  • jcbenten - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    Also helps prevent buildup of films on the edge of the wafer that can split off and leave crap all over the wafer. Wafer edge control and be a PITA.
  • saratoga4 - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    Pretty sure they use the same mask for the edges as the center of the wafer, so on the edges the mask still "exposes" parts of the silicon that aren't there. Avoiding this would probably require them to make extra masks for the edges, which would be expensive.
  • saratoga4 - Sunday, May 22, 2016 - link

    http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Publications/Journals/j104...

    Figure 1 shows why.
  • agentbb007 - Saturday, May 21, 2016 - link

    Got my i7-6700K for $359.99 from Newegg on 8/28/2015, guess I got lucky.
  • alpha754293 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link

    Didn't realise that I lucked out when I bought my 6700K on Pi Day from Microcenter for $314.15. :)
  • alpha754293 - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link

    BTW, my local Microcenter in Michigan has it listed now for $309.99 for the 6700K. While you might not be local to the Microcenter in Michigan, point is - you might want to check. ;) Have fun.
  • grimfees - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    Am I the only one who seems to recall that the MSRPs for the 6600k and 6700k were like $329 and $229 around 9 months ago? That info seems to have disappeared and been replaced by "recommended price" or a figure around $20 higher in recent months. The whole artificially constrained supply and $100 higher effective retail price was some serious BS. Retail outlets should be prevented by law for selling these things for more than the initial MSRP to prevent this garbage in the future.

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