Our sister site CNET has already brought in a couple of desktops using the Skylake chips and says they provide about a 10-percent performance boost over high-end previous-generation processors, though as with all benchmarks, your mileage may vary.
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Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has finally launched the first of its sixth-generation Skylake processors today, with two new 14 nm desktop CPUs targeted toward gamers and PC enthusiasts.
The Core i7-6700K is the flagship processor belonging to Intel Skylake-S family that includes unlocked processors such as the Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K. The new Skylake chips are the first of what Intel is calling the 6 generation Core processor family.
It’s very likely that more details will come from Intel at IDF 2015 later this year, as the company will unveil more about the successor of the old Broadwells. “Ever since Sandy Bridge, Intel hasn’t really had a lot of headroom in its newer-generation processors”. Most motherboard vendors we spoke with said, DDR3L on a desktop board is unlikely outside of special use cases. The acrylic hard tube setup makes the Luxe series shine over other gaming PCs and the D5 pump & reservoir setup ensures cool operations.
Of course, retail pricing of the aforementioned Intel Core i7-6700K is a tad expensive ($350). The newest processors also feature Intel® RealSense™ for immersive experiences; USB Type-C and Thunderbolt™ 3 compatibility; advanced security benefits like Biometric login; and cable-free connectivity with wireless docking and 4K WiDi.
Meanwhile, the Core i5-6600K drops the hyperthreading and starts off at 3.5GHz with a boost of up to 3.9GHz. Indeed, both chips seem to be designed for a user that’s comfortable with tweaking their set-up for the best possible results, as they have been designed with overclocking in mind. “The PC remains the number one platform for gaming from a volume, revenue, and growth perspective and Intel takes the segment seriously”, Dan Snyder, public relations manager at Intel, said in a post on the company blog. It’s also got a mammoth TDP of 91W.
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Skylake is the “tock” part of Intel’s “tick-tock” strategy. (Note, though, that this feature is only available on the Core i7.). As such you’re getting the die-shrink of Broadwell and the new design of Skylake, which should add up to a decent leap in performance/power saving over Haswell. Both processors also support Turbo Boost 2 and Hyper-Threading, while the new integrated graphics GPU – Intel HD Graphics 530 – offers a claimed 20-40% improvement over the equivalent Haswell processors.
