The Intel 6th Gen Skylake Review: Core i7-6700K and i5-6600K Tested
by Ian Cutress on August 5, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGenerational Tests on the i7-6700K: Legacy, Office and Web Benchmarks
Moving on to the generational tests, and similar to our last Broadwell review I want to dedicate a few pages to specifically looking at how stock speed processors perform as Intel has released each generation. For this each CPU is left at stock, DRAM set to DDR3-1600 (or DDR4-2133 for Skylake in DDR4 mode) and we run the full line of CPU tests at our disposal.
Legacy
Some users will notice that in our benchmark database Bench, we keep data on the CPUs we’ve tested back over a decade and the benchmarks we were running back then. For a few of these benchmarks, such as Cinebench R10, we do actually run these on the new CPUs as well, although for the sake of brevity and relevance we tend not to put this data in the review. Well here are a few of those numbers too.
Even with the older tests that might not include any new instruction sets, the Skylake CPUs sit on top of the stack.
Office Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totalling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and results are given in seconds.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Sunspider 1.0.2
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
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Jaguar36 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I still don't see the point in upgrading from Sandybridge let alone anything newer. Its a big chunk of a cash for a new mobo, CPU and memory, all for what, 25%?Cumulus7 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Exactly.Usually i suggest an upgrade if you get approximately twice the performance (+100%). But for 25%: forget it! Never!!!
colonelclaw - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
The other way of looking at it is that it's amazing how good the Sandy Bridge numbers hold up, that good ol' 2600k is one of Intel's all-time great CPUs. Be happy you backed a winner!mrcaffeinex - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I did and I am very happy. It frees up funds to focus on other parts that make a bigger impact like more RAM, a larger SSD, and of course a better video card.This is better than Haswell in several ways and I imagine the overclockers are going to have some fun since they have been given back more options than some of the previous generations. At least it looks like Intel is paying more attention to the enthusiasts this time around, even if they are not the largest target market.
Cellar Door - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Well, I'm glad I held back on the 2600K and 3770K and got haswell!! - So with this kind of reasoning, its a never ending circle.Look at the platform overall, the pcix storage, nvme compatibility, m.2 ports. USB 3.1 which will be all over the place a lot faster then people realize.
At the same speed its 37% faster and "In specific tests, it is even higher" - a good clocking 6700K will be a nice upgrade for anyone with Sandy. Just like Haswell was for Nahelem users.
Seems a perfectly justifiable upgrade.
Kutark - Sunday, August 9, 2015 - link
Eh. I've been wanting an excuse to upgrade from my 2600k. I am an "enthusiast" and building PC's and such is my hobby. So, it's not always just simply the price/perf value proposition. Christmas is coming up and my nephew doesn't have his own PC yet, and also loves to play steam games (he usually does it at his grandparents). So, this gives me an excuse to build a new setup. I still have my GTX 760 laying around that i upgraded to a 980ti. So a 6700k setup would be a nice pairing with the 980ti and should realistically set me for 3-4 years.kmmatney - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I'm an i5 3570K owner. If I'm going to upgrade, I'd look for an i7-4790K (or even a i7 2600K) on Ebay before completely overhauling my system with this.darkfalz - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Even that's a waste of money unless you are doing a tonne of Handbrake.mapesdhs - Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - link
No, get a 2700K instead, they oc much better than the 2600K.2700K = 5GHz guaranteed, even with a simple TRUE and one fan (I use the ASUS M4E,
built five so far).
tim851 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Agreed. Especially when you factor in that those 25% is peak performance. How often does the average user call on peak performance? I think the most common and frequent scenario for average users to need CPU power is gaming. And here, due to the fact that GPUs are the bottleneck, you won't even get 10%.From an enthusiast point of view, the last 4 years since Sandy Bridge have been disappointing. If not outright worrying.