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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taltamir - Friday, October 23, 2015 - link
Recognizing reality as it is, and being willing to admit that AMD is a joke, does not make someone an intel fanboy nor does it mean they want intel to win and AMD to fold.Samus - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
This launch and the performance of skylake over haswell/broadwell is entirely unexpected because it is wholly unnecessary. The ipc improvement is upward of 10% in some cases, when normally it has been 4-6% in the past. It's amazing that the ipc improvement over nehalem is almost 50% while using nearly half the power. They are finally progressing after dogging along since sandybridgeptmmac - Saturday, August 8, 2015 - link
Intel has been turning a double decked supertanker to catch mobile chips on dozens of smaller platforms. Notably Apple is riding on a trialled super yacht and is leading the pack. The real,race going on right now is who will build the first photonics based chip and actually make money selling it. Intel is in that race, but we don't really have much data as to who will take the lead there. The real race is heading towards where the puck will be in 10 years. This is like watching Americas cup in the 50's. It is not important to the average person.Jaybus - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link
Expect hybrid chips first. These will have photonic i/o with electronic cores. This will allow an inter-chip [serial] bus at core-clock speeds, drastically reducing the need for on-chip caching and replacing 64 (or more) traces from CPU to DRAM with a single optical trace. L3 (maybe L2) could likely be eliminated, freeing up real estate and reducing power. Essentially, it allows using DRAM modules, peripheral chips, and even GPUs and other CPUs as if they were all on-chip. Actual photonic cores would come later, perhaps much later.CaedenV - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
And we would all buy that processor rather than eternally waiting in purgatory. I really hope AMD puts out something amazing, even if I am not going to buy it.TheGladiator2212 - Friday, October 16, 2020 - link
Yup...This comment aged badly
Mariosti - Friday, September 10, 2021 - link
Well, this comment didn't age well.prisonerX - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
I think the funniest thing is how people bag AMD and praise Intel while paying through the nose for CPUs that are marginally faster (or marginally slower) than last generation.It's especially funny since Intel is selling its hottest chips (TDP wise, compared to other CPUs it makes) to the "mainstream" while wasting a huge % of the die on a useless integrated GPU that no-one who is willing to pay actually uses.
I always buy AMD because I support competition, it gives me much better value for my money, provides more balanced and batter matched performance and because I'm not a child I have no need for bragging rights about the singe threaded performance of my CPU that I don't need.
D. Lister - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
"I always buy AMD because I support competition, it gives me much better value for my money, provides more balanced and batter matched performance and because I'm not a child I have no need for bragging rights about the singe threaded performance of my CPU that I don't need."That's right... children brag about single-thread performance (was there anyone in this section actually doing that though?). Adults, on the other hand apparently, brag about several things simultaneously, like the better performance per dollar of their purchase, and having a superior sense of maturity, morality, economics and technology.
You sir, are duly nominated for the AnandTech comment section's esteemed "Irony of The Month" award for August '15... bravo!
Eugene86 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Well he's gotta justify that purchase decision to himself somehow...