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
Catching Up: How Intel Can Re-Align Consumer and HEDT
Earlier in this piece I stated three reasons why the enterprise market has an out of step cadence with the latest CPU microarchitecture: product stability, regular releases, and platform longevity.
To get stability, using Intel’s tried and tested core makes sense, rather than the latest and greatest. The longevity of each enterprise platform is such that each socket and chipset generation must last for two CPU cycles, allowing a potential upgrade path, but also means that customers aren’t ripping out their installations every 12-18 months with fresh new ones in order to beat the competition. Also, by being behind the mainstream platform at a slightly slower refresh rate, it allows the release of enterprise CPUs to compensate for any process delay on the latest architecture.
But at this point, we are now a generation and a year behind the mainstream and latest microarchitecture. There are features in the latest mainstream Skylake CPUs, such as Speed Shift (the ability to react to high priority frequency requests up to 20x faster to save power and improve user experience), that are not in the enterprise and HEDT products. If the out-of-step and slower cadence continues, we could be two generations behind fairly easily. However, Intel has (inadvertently) developed a get-out-of-jail free card here.
Earlier in the year we reported that Intel is changing its processor development strategy due to a combination of factors including the slowing of Moore’s Law and the difficulty in creating a smaller lithography node to create processors. Intel was on their tick-tock strategy for around a decade, alternating between smaller nodes and new microarchitecture designs to give performance increases every cycle (or half-cycle). Tick-tock was well received and provided Intel and its investors with a steady expectation and revenue stream when the new product delivered and if it met expectation. When Intel hit several bumps with 14nm, tick-tock became an extended 'tiiiick-toock', slowly lengthening out the time between updates. Then this year Intel said that, for the CPU product line based on the Core microarchitecture family at least, would move to ‘Process-Architecture-Optimization’, or a three-stage cycle for 14nm (the current node) and 10nm (the next node).
On the mainstream product segment, this means that the 14nm family, originally featuring Broadwell (tick) and Skylake (tock), will become Broadwell (process), Skylake (architecture) and Kaby Lake (optimization). The level of ‘optimization’ that Kaby Lake will provide is unknown at this point, but what used to be a 24-month cycle can now become a 36-month cycle very easily.
But it is not immediately obvious what this means to the enterprise segment. One would naturally expect the segment to follow the PAO implementation, albeit slower. Here’s Intel’s potential trick for the future: depending on the level of ‘optimization’ in the final stage of the cycle, the enterprise segment has the potential to just bypass and ignore it, keeping the cycle length the same and giving Intel an opportunity to realign the microarchitectures. The net product would be 36 month cycles, spanning 3 product generations at the consumer level and 2 product generations at the enterprise/HEDT level.
That being said, it’s a little bit of conjecture. We have spoken to some senior members of Intel about this, and it was acknowledged that it could be a potential strategy, however as expected nothing like this would be confirmed in a casual conversation even if it was decided at a senior level. It will make an interesting point when the enterprise market rolls around to Skylake-E and Skylake-EP based cores and beyond, if Kaby Lake-E will be a ‘thing’ or not.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
205 Comments
View All Comments
JimmiG - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
What's worse than the price premium is that you're also paying for the previous generation architecture.I really don't see why anyone would want one of those CPUs. For gaming and most typical applications, the mainstream models are actually faster because of their more modern architecture and higher clock speeds. If you're a professional user, you should really be looking at Xeons rather than these server rejects.
K_Space - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Exactly. I think that's the whole point: Intel realizes that -realistically- little profit will be made from these B-Es given the little incremental increase in performance so why not use them as an advert for the Xeons (which they have aggressively been marketing for HEDT not just servers over the last few month). Anyone considering these will consider the Xeons now.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
There are a few benchmarks where they do make sense, if and only if you are doing that particular task for your job i.e. an environment where time is money. For the rest of us, if I need to do a video conversion of some kind its relatively rare and I can always start it before I go to bed.retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
People belittle AMD because even though Intel has dramatically slowed down the pursuit of speed, AMD still cant catch up. It's actually worse than that though. If AMD were competitive at all in the past decade Intel would still be perusing speed and would be further ahead. Its a double edged sword sort of thing.Flunk - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Yes, Intel has slowed down for AMD to catch up before. Cough, Pentium 4.retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Yup... and back then AMD took advantage of it. I was the happy owner of a Thunderbird, then an Athlon, then an Athlon X2... Then Intel woke up and AMD went to sleep. For the past decade AMD has been too far behind to even matter. In the desktop CPU space there is Intel and then ... no-one.Flunk - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
You're right, it's totally Intel's fault. They could launch a line of high-end consumer chips that cost the same as the current i5/i7 line but had 2-3X as many cores but no iGPU. They'd cost Intel the same to fabricate. They're the only ones to blame for their slowing sales.khon - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I could see people buying the i7-6850K for gaming, 6 cores at decent speeds + 40 PCI-E lanes, and $600 is not that bad when consider that some people have $700 1080's in SLI.However, the i7-6900/6950 look like they are for professional users only.
RussianSensation - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
40 PCI lanes are worthless when i7 6700K can reliably overclock to 4.7-4.8Ghz, and has extra PCIe 3.0 lanes off the chipset. The 6850K will be lucky to get 4.5Ghz, and still lose in 99% of gaming scenarios. Z170 PCIe lanes are sufficient for 1080 SLI and PCIe 3.0 x4 in RAID.6850K is the worst processor in the entire Broadwell-E line.
Impulses - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Well if you're about gaming only you might as well compare it with the 6600K... AFAIK HT doesn't do much for gaming does it? The 6800K isn't much better either when your can just save a few bucks with the 5820K.I feel like they could've earned some goodwill despite the high end price hikes by just putting out a single 68xx SKU for like $500, it'd still be a relative price hike for entry into HEDT but could be more easily seen as a good value.
Are the 6800K bad die harvests or something? Seems dumb to keep that artificial segmentation in place otherwise when HEDT is already pretty far removed from the mainstream platform.
When I chose the 6700K over the 5820K I thought it'd be the last quad core I'd buy, but at this pace (price hikes, HEDT lagging further behind, lower end SKU still lane limited) I don't know if that'll be true.