The Intel Broadwell-E Review: Core i7-6950X, i7-6900K, i7-6850K and i7-6800K Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 31, 2016 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Enterprise
- Prosumer
- X99
- 14nm
- Broadwell-E
- HEDT
Alien: Isolation
If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled.
Total War: Attila
The Total War franchise moves on to Attila, another The Creative Assembly development, and is a stand-alone strategy title set in 395AD where the main story line lets the gamer take control of the leader of the Huns in order to conquer parts of the world. Graphically the game can render hundreds/thousands of units on screen at once, all with their individual actions and can put some of the big cards to task.
For low end graphics, we test at 720p with performance settings, recording the average frame rate. With mid and high range graphics, we test at 1080p with the quality setting. In both circumstances, unlimited video memory is enabled and the in-game scripted benchmark is used.
Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. For low end systems we test at 720p on the lowest settings, whereas mid and high-end graphics play at 1080p with very high settings across the board. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).
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RussianSensation - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It's a slap in the face when 6850/6900/6950X are also crap overclockers and will get owned hard in games and every day tasks by a $310 6700K. The only CPU that even remotely makes sense is the 6800K. For workstation use case, dual Xeons will smash the 6950X. Heck, it's better to build a 6900K + 6700K in the same case allowing one to be productive and game at the same time. Phanteks makes such cases now. 6950X is just a way to show your status, nothing more.mapesdhs - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
Something usually missing from reviews now is an oc'd 4820K, which is annoying because a 4c IB-E on X79 allows for quite a lot of oc headroom given the high rating of the socket and the beefy power delivery available on boards like the R4E, etc. I bet it would give many of the newer CPUs a serious pelting.Drazick - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Could we have Extreme Edition with Iris Pro + 128MB eDRAM?That would be a great addition (Even only for the 6 Cores Part).
Eden-K121D - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
Iris pro would be useless but i agree with the eDRAM acting as L4 Cachebarleyguy - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Great review.One possible omission though: You mentioned that the Xeon E-2640 is a better deal as far as price/performance, but there are no Xeons on the benchmark charts. Do you plan to review the E-2640 at some time in the future?
Thanks.
ShieTar - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
That might indeed be a statement which needs to be proven by tests?The 2640 has 10 Broadwell-Cores at a 2.8GHz All-Cores-Turbo, the 6950X should have a 10-core-Turbo of 3.2GHz, so you might argue you get 87.5% of the Performance for ~60% of the CPU cost. But the 2640 does have a slower verified memory speed, which may have a little impact. And its turbo boost settings are defined to hit a 90W TDP, and I don't think you can change that even in a workstation with plenty of cooling available. Add to that the fact that you can overclock to improve the performance of the 6950X, and that the 700$ price difference should be considered relative to the overall system cost, and you probably end up with very similar price-to-performance ratios.
I think the stronger challenger to the 6950X price-to-performance figures is the 2687W v4, which can be had for just over 2k$, and gets you annother 2 cores at almost the same clocks. That's ~16% more performance for ~16% more CPU cost, which translates into less than 10% higher system cost.
samer1970 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Hello ,we all know that games dont use more than 8 threads today ...
so to take advantage of an 8 cores or 10 cores CPU in Gaming you should Disable HT (Hyperthreading) and run the gaming test again to compare it against the 4 cores i7 6700K .
and test it with SLI as well to reach the i7 6700k bottleneck !
let me put it more simple ,
The i7 6700K has 4 cores and can oc to 4.4 ghz easy . this CPU will give us 8 Virtual cores comparable to 2.2 GHZ clock for each virtual core .
However the 8 Coresi7 6900K , With the HT Turned OFF , will give us 8 cores @ 4.4 ghz EACH !
Thats double the speed of the 4 cores i7 ! if the game uses 8 threads .
EVEN if we dont OC the 8 cores , it would be 3.2GHZ VS 2.2 GHZ !!!
if you ask why Disable HT ? simple because the game will never use 16 Virtual cores !!! and the advantage is LOST .
Please run the test again for games with HT turned off .
and to stress the CPU more , TEST SLI as well , we want the i7 6700K to bottleneck !
THANKS
oh and Intel Should release i5 Broadwel-E CPU , 8 cores without HT , CHEAPER and BETTER for GAMERS
RussianSensation - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Nice try but no cigar. 6700K @ 4.8ghz + HT is the optimal gaming CPU. No current game even scales linearly across 6 cores + HT. 8-10 core CPU with a slower architecture would lose badly to an i7 6700K @ 4.8Ghz + DDR4 4000.There is not a chance 6950X @ 4.4Ghz can keep up with 6700K OC.
http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz...
By the time games use 8-10 cores, we'll be on PS5/XB2 generation in 2020-2021 and Icelake-E. Broadwell-E 8-10 cores will be outdated.
adamod - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3039552/hardware/te...look at the ashes bench
mapesdhs - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
Oh grud not here aswell! You've been banging on about this HT thing on toms for ages.