Ntel Core I7-6700k Review & Gaming Benchmarks Vs I3 6100

Our Verdict

Its performance gains may be modest, but the Cadre i7-6700K is definitely exciting on the overclocking forepart.

For

• 14nm goodness
• It'due south a bit faster
• Intel has opened up the overclocking

Against

• It's not a lot faster
• Even so simply iv cores
• Intel'southward production strategy has gone walkies

TechRadar Verdict

Its functioning gains may be modest, just the Core i7-6700K is definitely heady on the overclocking forepart.

Pros

• +

  14nm goodness

• +

  It's a bit faster

• +

  Intel has opened upward the overclocking

Cons

• -

  It's not a lot faster

• -

  Nonetheless simply four cores

• -

  Intel'south production strategy has gone walkies

First the bad news. The all-new Intel Core i7-6700K – which pitches in at around $350 (nearly £225, or AU$475) – does not tear PC gaming a new one. Information technology'due south non a render monster similar none before. It doesn't have desktop number crunching to a whole new level. Bummer.

Instead, it's yet another Intel processor with four cores, 8 threads and a habit of humming along at about 4GHz. Isn't that what Intel'due south acme processors for its mainstream platforms accept looked like forever? In fact, it's the way things have been since the inflow of Sandy Span back in belatedly 2010.

Of course, nosotros've been complaining about the glacial rate of progress at Intel for then long, you might expect this latest mediocrity to have us pondering the possibility of putting an stop to information technology all by stringing ourselves up with SATA cables. Subsequently all, you could say the glacial progress comment is actually a bit kind. Intel has in fact backtracked in contempo years courtesy of silliness similar dumbed downwardly chip packaging and cooling, along with overclocking that's ever more locked down.

Then it'due south true, nosotros're not exactly diddled away by this new flake itself. And all the same it'due south still the most exciting mainstream Intel CPU for years. How so? Let'south start with the basics, even if they are a scrap slow.

Specification

The 6700K is i of two launch chips representing the new Skylake family of 14nm CPUs – the other is the Core i5-6600K. This i7 and its quartet of unlocked Hyperthreaded cores rocks in at 4GHz nominally with a 4.2GHz Turbo clock. Yup, just 200MHz worth of Turbo boost. Why fifty-fifty carp?

Anyway, it slots into the new LGA1151 socket and thereby hooks into Intel's new 100-series chipsets, the nearly notable of which for us functioning junkies is the Z170, which effectively replaces the erstwhile Z97. Graphics-wise, there's an Intel HD Graphics 530 cadre onboard, and thus non 1 of the fancy new Iris or Iris Pro solutions. Got that?

Whatever, Skylake is a 'Tock' in Intel's Tick-Tock flake development parlance and that means it's supposedly an all-new processor design on an existing product node, in this case 14nm. Except we've barely seen any of the offset 14nm chips, known as Broadwell, on the desktop and at present Skylake is go for launch. Put simply, Intel's CPU roadmap has gone completely out of whack.

The other problem, when it comes to improving CPU operation, is that Intel's CPU engineers snaffled up all the depression hanging fruit long ago. Then they climbed the branches and grabbed everything else. And now there's almost nothing left. Intel's CPU cores are outrageously optimised.

Benchmarks

• Cinebench R15: 915
• x264 video encoding (frames per second): 56
• Retention bandwidth: 26GB/southward
• Metro: Last Calorie-free (frames per 2d – minimum in brackets): 37 (23)
• Shadow of Mordor (frames per second – minimum in brackets): 53 (37)
• Project Cars (frames per 2d – minimum in brackets): 28 (27)
• 3DMark: 5883
• Maximum overclock: 4.8GHz
• Peak platform power consumption: 140W

All this explains why our above benchmark results testify such a modest uptick in raw CPU performance. It's all of 4% faster than the existing Core i7-4970K in Cinebench. Bleh. As for video encoding, yous're looking at a vi% leap. Inappreciably exciting.

The game benchmarks are arguably even less dramatic. At the kinds of resolutions that a fairly pricey chip like this is likely to find itself operating, the impact of the 6700K is slim going on none. If you've got a fast Intel Haswell processor or an Ivy Bridge chip, hell maybe even a Sandy Span chip, y'all probably won't feel much subjective divergence with Skylake. It'south only not a big enough step forwards.

Nosotros even establish that the weirdo chip that is the Broadwell Core i7-5775C has the edge in some game benchmarks, and that's probably thank you to the 128MB of eDRAM, something the new Skylake Ks lack.

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Contributor

Applied science and cars. Increasingly the twain shall meet. Which is handy, because Jeremy (Twitter) is addicted to both. Long-time tech journalist, former editor of iCar magazine and incumbent car guru for T3 magazine, Jeremy reckons in-machine engineering science is about to become thermonuclear. No, not exploding cars. That would exist light-headed. And unsafe. But rather an explosive period of unprecedented innovation. Enjoy the ride.

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Source: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/processors/intel-core-i7-6700k-1301105/review

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