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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michael2k - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Zen doesn't exist, yet, so cannot compete at all.When Zen does exist, however, AMD would literally win a Darwin Award if they offer more than a 10% discount for parts that perform similarly.
In other words, if Zen is capable of powering a 10 core part that offers 90% of the 6950X performance, expect it to cost $1,550. If it offers 110% of the performance, expect it to cost $1,725.
Spunjji - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
There's a small fault in your logic, which is that if they priced it like Intel are here they would sell as few of them as Intel clearly expect to, and thus struggle to make the market share gains that they badly need.I'd expect a competitive product to cost something more like $1000 (at which price they would still be making PHENOMENAL margins) and force a price-drop from Intel. They're not going to give anything away for free, but they absolutely stand to benefit from being less obscenely liberal with their margins than Intel.
This is assuming they execute on time and as promised, which is, well, not very AMD of late.
cswor - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link
I agree. In their underdog position, they need to undercut and can still probably make a nice profit on a chip priced to sell larger volumes, assuming it performs and they can manufacture it.Azix - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
AMD might not have the luxury of not going for the jugular. If the yields aren't great maybe their prices will be that high. They won't gain market share/mind share with high prices though.just4U - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
They won't be that high. AMD has only been able to price their higher end consumer processor at intel pricing "once" (to my knowledge) and it didn't stay there long.nandnandnand - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
How do we know that Zen is that close to Broadwell in IPC (and Skylake, since there is very little difference)? I'd love for it to be true, but AMD's Zen 8 cores need to solidly beat Intel's quad cores and do almost as well in single threaded performance.retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
" Zen is supposed to be really, really close to Broadwell in IPC"- What has AMD done in the past decade that makes you believe that? I will believe it when its released and retail units (not engineering samples) are independently tested. Until then I don't believe anything AMD says.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I'm not about to sing the praises of AMD completely yet, but I think there's reason to believe they're more focused than they've been in the last ten years. On top of that, Jim Keller was good way back when, he's proved he still has great ideas now with Apple, so there's hope that Zen could really impress. They still have to execute (something we know isn't a given for AMD) but we'll know all in a few months time.If the rumors were true about Vega in October (I doubt they are), they could have a pretty nice high publicity 1-2 punch. It's unlikely Vega will show up then, but I'd be pretty happy if it did.
retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I hear you, and I have heard that too... But all the same, AMD's PR is always far more active than their engineering teams leading up to launch. If it comes out and is as fast as they seems o think it will be and doesn't have any major heat or power issues (that cause the need to clock it lower than expected) it may be good... All the same, its best to wait until retail chips are released, prices set and units reviewed to decide.michael2k - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I am enthusiastic too, but if Zen really is that powerful I cannot imagine it selling at 30% of Intel prices. The more powerful the part, the higher the price will be, up to 90% of Intel's prices for similar performance.