My guess is that the wave of 2600k owners finally breaking down and upgrading would be a good explanation for the uptick in i7 sales. While the 6700k isn't a huge upgrade from the 2600k, it is measurably better, plus the availability of things like USB-C, NVME and even PCIE 3.0 offer a good enough reason to finally update those 4+ year old high-end systems. Imagine what sales would be like if they managed 25% speed boosts per generation instead of per 4 generations >.>
I agree. I have 3770K with GTX 980 Ti, 32GB RAM, and Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD. As of right now, we will have to wait at least 2 or 3 more years for a worthy upgrade.
I am going to wait till the following techs become available. (1) PCIe 4.0 (2) Truly 4K (or maybe even 5K) capable graphics cards (probably Nvidia Volta or AMD 500/600 series) (3) Intel Canonlake or the Ice Lake
I agree. If desktop computers were only about the CPU, then there would be no need to upgrade very often. The chipset on the MB's is where the action is. DDR4, 3.1 USB, PCI 3.0, M.2 NVMe, Displayport. etc. That's were the advancement is coming from. CPU's seem to be stagnating the last 5 years or so. SATA SSD have been stagnant also for 3 years or so. I believe 4k monitors and/ or 2k monitors at 144hz will need newer boards to maximize performance. PCI 2.0, SATA SSD, and DVI-D are moving into the past. I would be great if a 2500K would plug into a Z170 MB but Intel could not make billions upon billions if that were the case.
USB 3.0 is available on 6x chipsets. USB 3.1 can be enabled by pcie device, but benefits from it are very small, until you have hardware. There is literatlly a dozen devices with support for full 3.1. PCIe 2.0 isn't that much of a bottleneck. It's a tradeoff - I could drop in newer platform to enable more performance from gpu, but cpu will limit me - find me newer that can do 5.2 GHz. NVMe works on anything that has pci-express with sufficient bandwidth, just not as a boot drive. And even then it can be used as system drive (in Linux I can load up initrd from another device, I suppose I could do same in Windows). What turns me off from newer platform is drastic reduction in number of SATA connectors. With small capacities of SSD it makes perfect sense to pile them on, yet to do so I have to spare precious pcie lanes for a controller.
I finally upgraded my i7-920 built in 2008 to a i7-4770k in 2014, based on the promise that platform would be supported through the next generation of ships (Z87) which it wasn't. Even Z97 didn't support beyond Haswell (unless you really consider Broadwell a realistic upgrade...it wasn't, desktop variants were basically ghosts.)
Just super pissed off at Intel. If I had known how Skylake would turn out, demanding yet a new platform, and how much they botched Haswell, with FIVR, very poor thermal performance and a dead-end platform, I would have done what all the smart people obviously did (based on the sales of Skylake) and waited another 15 months. I invested hundreds in a motherboard, processor, and DDR3 memory, thinking I'd be able to upgrade the CPU at least once. I can't think of a single Intel platform, ever, that only supported ONE GENERATION of CPU.
i7-4790k -> i7-5xxxk -> i7-6700k. Not only skipped a year, but also a delayed release.
For what its worth: I only upgraded from my [email protected] a few months back because i needed SLAT opcodes for Hyper-V. Otherwise, i sorta regret the upgrade, its just not that much better.
Personally was waiting for SATA to be removed from motherboards and only M.2 slots.
Case designers need to catch the fuck up, too. Why do we still have 5.25" bays and 3.5" bays all over? I get it; some people need it. But, what about the rest of us? :(
I need as much as possible 5.25" bays. I'm using two adapters 1x5.25" to 6x 2.5" to house SSDs, fan controller, LC controller (Aquaero), double bay liquid reservoir, four hot-swappable trayless hdd bays, and general purpose panel with usb 3.0, card reader, and dip switches to control PSU settings. That's 11, I'm full (to be honest my case has 10 slots, but I'm creative), and I have a couple of other devices that I'd like to stick it there.
m.2 is fine as boot/main work drive, but for general-purpose storage SATA is fine. I have ~13 TB of data, that would cost me an arm and a leg to store on m.2 devices. I need faster than GbE transfer on that data, so NAS is out of the question, but I don't need 300-400 MB. So I'm mixing up mechanical and flash storage, slowly replacing hdds with SSDs, but I'm running out of SATA. I have one 4 port controller, but I'm out of PCIe- slots. If I made a switch it would be to a HEDT platform (think about ASRock X99-Extreme 11 with ~20 SATA connectors). But the race to limit options of desktop users is on :(
No they did not, remember Broadwell? Yeah I don't believe you did, it was the i7-5775c, its still an unlocked variant just did not focus on IPS performance rather power performance. That's why it never hit the mainstream, it was only a 2% performance increase off the i7-4790k
It's still so funny how relevent those older Quad Core 2's are. I have a bunch of Q9300-ish CPU's at a client in some HP DC8000's and they're actually faster than the brand new Core i3's they just bought, same SSD's and all (and the DC8000's don't even have SATA3)
PCIe 3.0 doesn't add much. Site tests of games with different link speeds some years ago showed very few games suffered that much even from being restricted to 4x 2.0, with most exceptions simply being badly coded games like FSX.
Measuraby better is a bit vague. A tiny percentage difference is measurable, but in absolute terms is often not remotely worth the cost. Never mind the 2600K, there are still plenty of people running 2500K systems who are more than happy with their current setup. In reaity, newer cards are still very effective on older systems, a lot more so than many would assume (I've done plenty of tests to check this, eg. 3-way 980 SLI on P55).
Even older platforms, like Nehalem, LGA1366 are very viable. They aren't that much overclockable, sadly, because of insane TDP, but ample connectivity and 6 ddr3 slots draw people in, not to mention it's dirt cheap now.
C2Duo here. I see no need to upgrade until they finally release a decent unlocked desktop CPU with integrated graphics that can beat my Radeon HD5770.
AMD might get the sale once they finally come up with DDR4 APU (which should be able to beat HD5770) unless Intel stops going full retard with their choice of gimped integrated graphics for most recent unlocked desktop chips ...
Microcenter has the I7 for $369.99 and the I5 for $219.99 in store pick-up only sadly....They always seem to have the best CPU prices whenever I look....
Can't really see for the life of me, why people, all of a sudden, would feel an insurmountable need to throw their 2500k/2600k/3770k/4770k systems overboard the vessel and rush to the stores to get Skylake for QUOTE usb 3 , sata6 , nvme , pcie 3 UNQUOTE.
I haven't managed to find a use for my USB 3.0 port yet, SATA 6 is meh, don't even know or care what on earth is nvme, and I can't see how my GPU benefits from PCIE 3.0, really, I can't.
USB3 is handy because your external backup drive nowadays runs faster than USB2 can manage, but USB3 cards plug into a PCIe slot. NVMe is fast, but the adaptor to plug an nvme into a PCIe slot is $60 or so. So if you have two spare PCIe slots of any length you're fine.
Then like Tom said, you must not work much with an external USB drive (flash drive or HDD specifically). There's a world of difference in file transfer speeds between 2.0 and 3.0 in large volume transfers. For example, moving 40GB of data on my 3.0 64GB flash drive via 3.0 takes about 25 minutes. Doing the same on an older 2.0 laptop, it takes two hours. And when dealing with getting into the TB worth of data like with my 2TB external Seagate USB 3.0 drive, the difference becomes *many* hours...like most of the day....not just an hour or two.
Yes, I don't see the "unprecedented demand" either. PC sales are steady at best and I don't think all Celeron/Pentium/i3 users suddenly felt the urge to upgrade to i5/i7. It's simply intel taking advantage of AMD's (extremely) weak position in the market. And a sign of things to come if AMD doesn't get their act together.
"Since the difference between the i7-6700K and the i7-5820K is now miniscule, for many people it makes no sense to invest in a HEDT platform" – so, you think that getting for the same price 50% more cores is miniscule difference that makes no sense to invest in? Indeed, indeed...
Also, Intel X99 motherboards are not that more expensive – most people who are getting i7-6700K definitely would not pair it with cheapest socket 1151 motherboard.
"at least four memory modules" on X99 is also nonsense – it will work with 1, 2 or 3 modules with no problem. If you plug just 2 – you'll get the same two memory channels as on Skylake.
Yeah that was a dumb statement by the author. X99 boards with tons of features can be had for under $250 and the 5820K even with only dual sticks will outperform the 6700K in almost every multi threaded scenario. Plus you have the option of eventually upgrading to 10 core Broadwell and 8 slots for memory give you enormous upgrade potential. Why anyone would buy a Z10 + 6700K over X99 + 5820K is beyond me.
Yeah, this article sounds like someone regurgitated an Intel press piece.
"There is simply no need for the company to enable overclocking for lower-end models if users are eager to buy higher-end parts."
Fuck everything about that, I miss the Intel of the C2D days, when they had a wide range of interesting products, instead of a regimented table worked up by accountants with 5% actually being interesting.
Plus Haswell-E (and Broadwell) are the last platforms WITHOUT SGX extensions. So if you value your privacy/security versus NSA and anyone else sneaking malware/spyware onto your machine that cannot be debugged, snooped on or otherwise monitored once loaded, X99 is probably the last safe platform to get. For the same price, added security, more processor PCIe lines AND for 6 cores versus 4, THAT's the no-brainer option over a vanishing fraction more single-thread performance in Skylake.
I just wish the more adventurous mobo-makers (like ASRock) would revisit and update X99 with some of the latest bells and whistles as standard onboard, like more than one PCIe M2 NVME and replacing extinct SATA Express with USB 3.1 without messy patch solutions.
I upgraded from a i7 3770 rig and am very pleased with the i7 6700k. Had no problems at all, and it's fast as a rocket. It was worth it for me. Plus I just happen to have caught it in stock at Newegg for $375. But man was that price fluctuating wildly. I was checking New Egg/Amazon/Tiger D and even Micro Center all day and got lucky.
2500K @4.3 Ghz, Crucial 480 GB M500 SSD, 8GB RAM and Radeon HD 6870. I doubt I'll be upgrading anytime soon. I did have 16 GB of RAM before but transferred 8 GB from that to my home server/NAS build. Which was a good project and I guess an experiment into later CPUs. Got a Haswell Pentium G3258, coupled it with a Crucial 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and the H97 pro from ASRock and it's smoking with Win Server 2012. I'm too lazy to upgrade it as it does fine for my needs.
Still on Core 2 over here- Q6600 G0 @ 3.6Ghz on an X38 board with 8GB of DDR2, a couple of 250GB SSDs for system/apps/photos + 2TB spinning RAID-10 for backups, and a GTX670 (4GB version)- runs the older games I play (STALKER, Metro 2033 and the like) at 3840x2160 pretty ok and handles Adobe suite (Premiere, Photoshop, Lightroom) fine! Main reason I'd consider upgrading this winter/spring is to get SATA3 and onboard USB3- but likely I'm going to hold out till end of the year and see if AMD Zen is worth it; if not I'll wait till i5 7600K comes out and drives 6600K prices down a bit. Or hell, I may as well get a used 3570K 'cause Skylake still doesn't improve *that* much on IB/SB.
Now that Intel shut down BCLK overclocking on Skylake, it would be nice to see a <150$ i3 6400K for budget gamers. Would be a better option than the Pentium G3258, and would in all likelihood offer the same gaming performance as the >200$ i5's.
I have 2500K myself. Judging from the benchmarks I thought there is still no need to upgrade since the performance difference ain't that big to justify the expenses (after all 2500K still handles everything I throw on it). Then I built a computer for a relative with 6100T. Funny enough, it feels and reacts significantly faster than my 2500K. It was quite suprising discovery tbh. Ofc not that significantly to drop everything and run to buy new machine.
good, I can hardly give a *&%^. I dunno why intel makes a new generation of desktop chips with all about 10-20% best case improvement each year. why no sell for cheaper and revamp desktop chips with 1.5-2 X improvements every two - three years and concentrate only on mobile/ultra mobile chips.
Oh I forgot, google and friends need faster chips to predict when I am going to need to take my next dump and plan the universe accordingly.
Ok never mind, point taken. waste post but gonna submit anyway.
You are all funny or belong to the so-called enthusiast class. I'm a normal or average user like millions of others, and my rig is ivy bridge running pentium G2120 with 4GB of memory on Asrock H77m-itx. For me, it is more than enough.
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nmm - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
My guess is that the wave of 2600k owners finally breaking down and upgrading would be a good explanation for the uptick in i7 sales. While the 6700k isn't a huge upgrade from the 2600k, it is measurably better, plus the availability of things like USB-C, NVME and even PCIE 3.0 offer a good enough reason to finally update those 4+ year old high-end systems. Imagine what sales would be like if they managed 25% speed boosts per generation instead of per 4 generations >.>fackamato - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
2600k @ 4Ghz + GTX 980 + Samsung 840 Pro here, I don't see any reason to upgrade, yet!Perhaps next or next-next gen.
LordanSS - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
3770k here. Going for next-next gen myself, not enough of a performance boost yet in most of my usage scenarios. =/stun - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
I agree. I have 3770K with GTX 980 Ti, 32GB RAM, and Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD.As of right now, we will have to wait at least 2 or 3 more years for a worthy upgrade.
I am going to wait till the following techs become available.
(1) PCIe 4.0
(2) Truly 4K (or maybe even 5K) capable graphics cards (probably Nvidia Volta or AMD 500/600 series)
(3) Intel Canonlake or the Ice Lake
Matthmaroo - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
Z68 , so you have no need for usb 3 , sata6 , nvme , pcie 3I just got nvme is fucking amazing
jas340 - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
I agree. If desktop computers were only about the CPU, then there would be no need to upgrade very often. The chipset on the MB's is where the action is. DDR4, 3.1 USB, PCI 3.0, M.2 NVMe, Displayport. etc. That's were the advancement is coming from. CPU's seem to be stagnating the last 5 years or so. SATA SSD have been stagnant also for 3 years or so. I believe 4k monitors and/ or 2k monitors at 144hz will need newer boards to maximize performance. PCI 2.0, SATA SSD, and DVI-D are moving into the past. I would be great if a 2500K would plug into a Z170 MB but Intel could not make billions upon billions if that were the case.Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
USB 3.0 is available on 6x chipsets. USB 3.1 can be enabled by pcie device, but benefits from it are very small, until you have hardware. There is literatlly a dozen devices with support for full 3.1.PCIe 2.0 isn't that much of a bottleneck. It's a tradeoff - I could drop in newer platform to enable more performance from gpu, but cpu will limit me - find me newer that can do 5.2 GHz.
NVMe works on anything that has pci-express with sufficient bandwidth, just not as a boot drive. And even then it can be used as system drive (in Linux I can load up initrd from another device, I suppose I could do same in Windows). What turns me off from newer platform is drastic reduction in number of SATA connectors. With small capacities of SSD it makes perfect sense to pile them on, yet to do so I have to spare precious pcie lanes for a controller.
Samus - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
I finally upgraded my i7-920 built in 2008 to a i7-4770k in 2014, based on the promise that platform would be supported through the next generation of ships (Z87) which it wasn't. Even Z97 didn't support beyond Haswell (unless you really consider Broadwell a realistic upgrade...it wasn't, desktop variants were basically ghosts.)Just super pissed off at Intel. If I had known how Skylake would turn out, demanding yet a new platform, and how much they botched Haswell, with FIVR, very poor thermal performance and a dead-end platform, I would have done what all the smart people obviously did (based on the sales of Skylake) and waited another 15 months. I invested hundreds in a motherboard, processor, and DDR3 memory, thinking I'd be able to upgrade the CPU at least once. I can't think of a single Intel platform, ever, that only supported ONE GENERATION of CPU.
hurrakan - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Doesn't have to be Z68. I have 2600K on Z77, which includes native USB 3.0 and PCIE 3.0AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, February 21, 2016 - link
> I just got nvme is fucking amazingYou must love benchmarking, because the 950 Pro has insignificant real world gain for most types of usage.
coolhardware - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
Amen brother. Only a 2500K with GTX 960 here, but it's doing what I need. :-)Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
2600K @ 5.2 GHz + 2x GTX 970 + Intel 510+520, can't see here one too.Margalus - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
i7-930 @ 3.6ghz, 12GB ram, gtx 980ti with intel 520 ssds and samsung 850 evo ssd's.Waiting on the Broadwell 8-10 core cpu's to hit before upgrading. Another quad core just wouldn't be enough of an upgrade to justify itself for me.
blahsaysblah - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
i7-4790k -> i7-5xxxk -> i7-6700k. Not only skipped a year, but also a delayed release.For what its worth: I only upgraded from my [email protected] a few months back because i needed SLAT opcodes for Hyper-V. Otherwise, i sorta regret the upgrade, its just not that much better.
Personally was waiting for SATA to be removed from motherboards and only M.2 slots.
ikjadoon - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Case designers need to catch the fuck up, too. Why do we still have 5.25" bays and 3.5" bays all over? I get it; some people need it. But, what about the rest of us? :(svan1971 - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Well Blu Ray drives are still 5.25 last I checked and if you can't find a mid tower or smaller without 5.25 bays you aren't looking to hard enough.Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
I'm really sad that 8cm disks didn't fly off. We would have 3.5" optical drives now. And on 8cm bluray holds 7.5 GB of data on single layer.Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
I need as much as possible 5.25" bays. I'm using two adapters 1x5.25" to 6x 2.5" to house SSDs, fan controller, LC controller (Aquaero), double bay liquid reservoir, four hot-swappable trayless hdd bays, and general purpose panel with usb 3.0, card reader, and dip switches to control PSU settings. That's 11, I'm full (to be honest my case has 10 slots, but I'm creative), and I have a couple of other devices that I'd like to stick it there.Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
m.2 is fine as boot/main work drive, but for general-purpose storage SATA is fine. I have ~13 TB of data, that would cost me an arm and a leg to store on m.2 devices. I need faster than GbE transfer on that data, so NAS is out of the question, but I don't need 300-400 MB. So I'm mixing up mechanical and flash storage, slowly replacing hdds with SSDs, but I'm running out of SATA. I have one 4 port controller, but I'm out of PCIe- slots. If I made a switch it would be to a HEDT platform (think about ASRock X99-Extreme 11 with ~20 SATA connectors). But the race to limit options of desktop users is on :(SpookyRonnie - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
No they did not, remember Broadwell? Yeah I don't believe you did, it was the i7-5775c, its still an unlocked variant just did not focus on IPS performance rather power performance. That's why it never hit the mainstream, it was only a 2% performance increase off the i7-4790kRobATiOyP - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
My god 2% performance gain.. and I missed out on it!!Samus - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
It's still so funny how relevent those older Quad Core 2's are. I have a bunch of Q9300-ish CPU's at a client in some HP DC8000's and they're actually faster than the brand new Core i3's they just bought, same SSD's and all (and the DC8000's don't even have SATA3)mapesdhs - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
PCIe 3.0 doesn't add much. Site tests of games with different link speeds some years ago showed very few games suffered that much even from being restricted to 4x 2.0, with most exceptions simply being badly coded games like FSX.Measuraby better is a bit vague. A tiny percentage difference is measurable, but in absolute terms is often not remotely worth the cost. Never mind the 2600K, there are still plenty of people running 2500K systems who are more than happy with their current setup. In reaity, newer cards are still very effective on older systems, a lot more so than many would assume (I've done plenty of tests to check this, eg. 3-way 980 SLI on P55).
Vatharian - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Even older platforms, like Nehalem, LGA1366 are very viable. They aren't that much overclockable, sadly, because of insane TDP, but ample connectivity and 6 ddr3 slots draw people in, not to mention it's dirt cheap now.Arnulf - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
C2Duo here. I see no need to upgrade until they finally release a decent unlocked desktop CPU with integrated graphics that can beat my Radeon HD5770.AMD might get the sale once they finally come up with DDR4 APU (which should be able to beat HD5770) unless Intel stops going full retard with their choice of gimped integrated graphics for most recent unlocked desktop chips ...
RobATiOyP - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Dennard scaling is dead! You'll only see linear rather than exponential improvement, unless a radically different tech is found.Skraeling - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
Im hoping to get the cash together and or have my system FINALLY die as its I think going on 6 years old at this point.Im still rocking a Q9450 / Socket 775 so skylake would be a monstrous upgrade for me.
JETninja - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
Microcenter has the I7 for $369.99 and the I5 for $219.99 in store pick-up only sadly....They always seem to have the best CPU prices whenever I look....blahsaysblah - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
And the standard price was $320 until Black Friday.Still a fair price compared to Amazon and Newegg.
Buying a computer during holiday easily nets you a free GTX970.
KateH - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Microcenter FTW. And there's a 20$ discount for buying an Intel CPU together with a motherboard tooArtureld - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
5960X + 3 way GTX 980 + Samsung 950 Pro, - no reason to upgrade yet! Come on Intel... :pmapesdhs - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
"Due to unprecedented demand ..."Nah, more like simple lack of supply. When the supply is short, normal levels of demand will create price spikes.
It hasn't changed that much though, eg. in the UK the 6700K is still a ridiculous 300 UKP ($450).
Achaios - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
I agree with the above poster.Can't really see for the life of me, why people, all of a sudden, would feel an insurmountable need to throw their 2500k/2600k/3770k/4770k systems overboard the vessel and rush to the stores to get Skylake for QUOTE usb 3 , sata6 , nvme , pcie 3 UNQUOTE.
I haven't managed to find a use for my USB 3.0 port yet, SATA 6 is meh, don't even know or care what on earth is nvme, and I can't see how my GPU benefits from PCIE 3.0, really, I can't.
4770k/Z87 Maximus Hero/Gigabyte GTX 780 TI here.
TomWomack - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
USB3 is handy because your external backup drive nowadays runs faster than USB2 can manage, but USB3 cards plug into a PCIe slot. NVMe is fast, but the adaptor to plug an nvme into a PCIe slot is $60 or so. So if you have two spare PCIe slots of any length you're fine.Nfarce - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Then like Tom said, you must not work much with an external USB drive (flash drive or HDD specifically). There's a world of difference in file transfer speeds between 2.0 and 3.0 in large volume transfers. For example, moving 40GB of data on my 3.0 64GB flash drive via 3.0 takes about 25 minutes. Doing the same on an older 2.0 laptop, it takes two hours. And when dealing with getting into the TB worth of data like with my 2TB external Seagate USB 3.0 drive, the difference becomes *many* hours...like most of the day....not just an hour or two.bug77 - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Yes, I don't see the "unprecedented demand" either. PC sales are steady at best and I don't think all Celeron/Pentium/i3 users suddenly felt the urge to upgrade to i5/i7. It's simply intel taking advantage of AMD's (extremely) weak position in the market. And a sign of things to come if AMD doesn't get their act together.Senti - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
"Since the difference between the i7-6700K and the i7-5820K is now miniscule, for many people it makes no sense to invest in a HEDT platform" – so, you think that getting for the same price 50% more cores is miniscule difference that makes no sense to invest in? Indeed, indeed...Also, Intel X99 motherboards are not that more expensive – most people who are getting i7-6700K definitely would not pair it with cheapest socket 1151 motherboard.
Senti - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
"at least four memory modules" on X99 is also nonsense – it will work with 1, 2 or 3 modules with no problem. If you plug just 2 – you'll get the same two memory channels as on Skylake.Madpacket - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Yeah that was a dumb statement by the author. X99 boards with tons of features can be had for under $250 and the 5820K even with only dual sticks will outperform the 6700K in almost every multi threaded scenario. Plus you have the option of eventually upgrading to 10 core Broadwell and 8 slots for memory give you enormous upgrade potential. Why anyone would buy a Z10 + 6700K over X99 + 5820K is beyond me.britjh22 - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Yeah, this article sounds like someone regurgitated an Intel press piece."There is simply no need for the company to enable overclocking for lower-end models if users are eager to buy higher-end parts."
Fuck everything about that, I miss the Intel of the C2D days, when they had a wide range of interesting products, instead of a regimented table worked up by accountants with 5% actually being interesting.
asmian - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Plus Haswell-E (and Broadwell) are the last platforms WITHOUT SGX extensions. So if you value your privacy/security versus NSA and anyone else sneaking malware/spyware onto your machine that cannot be debugged, snooped on or otherwise monitored once loaded, X99 is probably the last safe platform to get. For the same price, added security, more processor PCIe lines AND for 6 cores versus 4, THAT's the no-brainer option over a vanishing fraction more single-thread performance in Skylake.I just wish the more adventurous mobo-makers (like ASRock) would revisit and update X99 with some of the latest bells and whistles as standard onboard, like more than one PCIe M2 NVME and replacing extinct SATA Express with USB 3.1 without messy patch solutions.
hapkiman - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
I upgraded from a i7 3770 rig and am very pleased with the i7 6700k. Had no problems at all, and it's fast as a rocket. It was worth it for me. Plus I just happen to have caught it in stock at Newegg for $375. But man was that price fluctuating wildly. I was checking New Egg/Amazon/Tiger D and even Micro Center all day and got lucky.faizoff - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
2500K @4.3 Ghz, Crucial 480 GB M500 SSD, 8GB RAM and Radeon HD 6870. I doubt I'll be upgrading anytime soon. I did have 16 GB of RAM before but transferred 8 GB from that to my home server/NAS build. Which was a good project and I guess an experiment into later CPUs. Got a Haswell Pentium G3258, coupled it with a Crucial 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and the H97 pro from ASRock and it's smoking with Win Server 2012. I'm too lazy to upgrade it as it does fine for my needs.darckhart - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
X58, xeon 5650. 6-cores at 4 GHz. 980 Ti. def no reason to upgrade yet...TomWomack - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
i5/750, four cores at 2.66GHz, integrated in one of those beautiful Apple 2560x1440 monitors; why would I ever upgrade?KateH - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Still on Core 2 over here- Q6600 G0 @ 3.6Ghz on an X38 board with 8GB of DDR2, a couple of 250GB SSDs for system/apps/photos + 2TB spinning RAID-10 for backups, and a GTX670 (4GB version)- runs the older games I play (STALKER, Metro 2033 and the like) at 3840x2160 pretty ok and handles Adobe suite (Premiere, Photoshop, Lightroom) fine! Main reason I'd consider upgrading this winter/spring is to get SATA3 and onboard USB3- but likely I'm going to hold out till end of the year and see if AMD Zen is worth it; if not I'll wait till i5 7600K comes out and drives 6600K prices down a bit. Or hell, I may as well get a used 3570K 'cause Skylake still doesn't improve *that* much on IB/SB.Now that Intel shut down BCLK overclocking on Skylake, it would be nice to see a <150$ i3 6400K for budget gamers. Would be a better option than the Pentium G3258, and would in all likelihood offer the same gaming performance as the >200$ i5's.
svan1971 - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Sure they are only they aren't and availability still sucks.jeffbui - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
BHPhoto had an amazing deal on a 6500k w/ Gigabyte mobo for $280.00 last week. I'm on an i5-750, almost pulled the trigger.HollyDOL - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
I have 2500K myself. Judging from the benchmarks I thought there is still no need to upgrade since the performance difference ain't that big to justify the expenses (after all 2500K still handles everything I throw on it).Then I built a computer for a relative with 6100T. Funny enough, it feels and reacts significantly faster than my 2500K. It was quite suprising discovery tbh. Ofc not that significantly to drop everything and run to buy new machine.
Arnulf - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Fresh OS install will do that ...HollyDOL - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Na, both were fresh... both with same SSD type.thope - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
good, I can hardly give a *&%^. I dunno why intel makes a new generation of desktop chips with all about 10-20% best case improvement each year. why no sell for cheaper and revamp desktop chips with 1.5-2 X improvements every two - three years and concentrate only on mobile/ultra mobile chips.Oh I forgot, google and friends need faster chips to predict when I am going to need to take my next dump and plan the universe accordingly.
Ok never mind, point taken. waste post but gonna submit anyway.
cikaba - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
You are all funny or belong to the so-called enthusiast class. I'm a normal or average user like millions of others, and my rig is ivy bridge running pentium G2120 with 4GB of memory on Asrock H77m-itx. For me, it is more than enough.vision33r - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
I'm still waiting for 10 Gbe on mobos.