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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medi03 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Uhm, 290X, not Fury vs 980?Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Don't forget only weaker APUs instead of the FX.Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
They have been doing this for quite some time.Ananke - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Intel shot itself in the foot with the DDR4 push. No matter how advanced the Skylake is, it is not worth upgrading from DDR3 to DDR4.Let's see what will happen on the mobo frontier - mainstream mobos with DDR3 will be the sellers.
boeush - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
DDR4 will be of more immediate benefit on laptops and tablets, where every Watt counts. DDR4 will be of more relevance once 3000+ offerings are cheaper and more abundant (there are some available now, but quite expensive.). Give it a few more months... In the meantime, early adopters pave the way with their wallets, as usual.lord_quake - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
yeah well if intel created a ring bus slot connected level 4 cache for users of the I5 and i7 classed cpu stanbd point from 2 meg 4 and y6 and 8 and 10 an 12 an 12 an 16 meg for a level four cache mounts on main board l4 cache they would give do it your self builders more advantage to buy more in intel for the system the person wants for custom builder more self addressed issues and connect the on slot level 4 cache on to the main board slot connected ring bus.,,. and in the end save moe transistor counts becuase moores law is starting to effect things,.Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
I would say that I am shocked that you did not include the FX processor in the charts and instead included only the weaker APUs. However, I am not shocked.xunknownx - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
kind of disapointed why you guys didnt include the haswell-e results in your benchmark graphs. i understand that x99 is more geared towards enthusiasts but the entry level i7-5820 is only $30-$30 more than the i7-6700k. Anyone considering the 6700k should consider the i7-5820 as well. it should be a no brainer.sudz - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
I really want to see a benchmark for a high CPU bottleneck game - Like Cities Skyline.Khanivore - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
And so the Sandy Bridge plodded on into the sunset till the next time...