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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im.thatoneguy - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I'm not a hardcore gamer but when I'm GPU rendering with CUDA my whole UI slows to a crawl and I can hardly move windows. A passable GPU built in would let me use my NVidia cards for CUDA while freeing my CPU integrated graphics for windowing.lilmoe - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Just wondering, have you tried that very scenario in Windows 10? Please do. I'm assuming you're using Windows 7 since I've had the same problem. But even with 100% GPU utilization, Windows 10 has been very responsive in comparison, at least for me.Flunk - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
They're on a die anyway, just cut down. Which makes it a really stupid waste.extide - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
No, the 48EU versions are separate dies than the 24EU versions.Beaver M. - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Wrong. Some games use the L4 cache, and you can see the increase in performance clearly. Also think about that the Broadwell is running lower clock speed.Skylake is a joke, if you open your eyes.
richardginn - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
GT2 WILL NEVER BEAT GT3e graphics. It is all about those EU'S and GT2 just does not have enough of them... More L4 Cache would help, but it will not be enough.Beaver M. - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I am talking about L4 being used and increasing framerates even if the IGP is not being used. You can see it clearly in the benchmarks.Refuge - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Then it sounds like you want the CPU with Crystalwell memory, but no iGPU.Beaver M. - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I am talking about what is there right now. Skylake is supposed to be an upgrade, yet Broadwell wipes the floor with it in many cases because of that L4, even with lower clock speeds.fokka - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
there will also be skylake chips with l4 cache.