It’s nowhere near a closely guarded industry secret, but proper, official details regarding the next batch of Intel processors have finally been officially revealed. The CPU chip giant quietly launched their Broadwell range for desktops today – but nothing says “wait a little longer” louder than an immediate confirmation of faster, better processors coming later this year.
Broadwell was more a die shrink than an actual performance step forward, which is probably why Intel is leaving it out in the cold and pushing far more for Skylake near the end of this year. The 14nm chips will have a suspected performance difference to both Broadwell and Haswell, coming in a total of ten different variants. The two that you should really be looking at fall in the Enthusiast bracket – and they’re quite enticing.
The first is the Core i7-6700K. It’s a typical quad-core processor with 8 threads, 8MB of L3 cache and a core clock speed of 4.0GHz (boosting up to 4.2GHz). With a Core i7 you also get Hyperthreading, which is great for a lot of video encoding programs but not so much for games. That’s why the Core i5s have been far more popular in the past, and that’s no different here.
The core i5-6600K is also a quad-core, with 6MB of L3 cache and a core clock of 3.5GHz (boosting up to 3.9GHz). It doesn’t have hyper threading, but will probably cost a pretty penny less as a result. Both chips support DDR3 and DDR4 memory, and will have unlocked multipliers thanks to the little “K” suffix at the end of both model numbers. That makes overclocking possible – and it’s a great way to get some performance out of your chip near the end of its life (or even right at the start).
If overclocking isn’t your thing, you could grab the mainstream chips Intel is also releasing. The i7-6700 hits a clock speed of 3.4GHz and a boost clock of 4.0GHz, while the i5-6600 comes in at 3.3GHz and 3.9GHz respectively. Don’t expect those numbers to go higher though, since the multiplier is completely locked down – and there’s not much you can do about it.
The entire Skylake range is expected to launch around Q3 this year, so there’s still a fair amount of time to see just how much more performance they’ll bring to the table. I’m still personally running with my (perfect) Sandy Bridge i7, and still haven’t seen a reason to upgrade. I’m quietly hoping Skylake will change that.
Last Updated: May 5, 2015
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 14:47
I’m a bit scared to see just how much these will cost.
Uberutang
May 5, 2015 at 14:50
they will be close to the current prices, unless AMD packs up and goes home.
Hammersteyn
May 5, 2015 at 14:50
Less than a new console?
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 14:53
Only just heh.
Admiral Chief
May 5, 2015 at 14:52
Two arms, both eyes, spine, lungs, two legs, dermal plating, infolink cranial implant……oh wait, you mean the CPU?
Hammersteyn
May 5, 2015 at 14:56
All our body parts will be useless anyways once have the technology to upload our consciousness to a computer. Then we’ll be immortal…… until loadshedding hits.
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:00
And here I thought you’d want to upload to a console instead. Load times too long? 😀
Hammersteyn
May 5, 2015 at 15:01
Hahahahaha yeah
konfab
May 5, 2015 at 15:01
Unless you do an SSD install on your console :3
Matthew Holliday
May 5, 2015 at 15:03
the cost of intel cpu’s put me off them for years.
couldnt justify dropping R2500 on an i5, when you could drop R1500 on an AMD quadcore…
since the cost of old tech hasnt and isnt dropping, pretty sure that the new tech will just be one tier up from the current stuff. so like, R3000+ for the new i5…
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:07
I’ve been watching prices for a while now because I need to upgrade. The cheapest I’ve seen a 4960k the last few months, which is what I want if I go Intel, is R3.2k. So I’d guess over R4k for the new ones. Never mind Intel mobos are also more expensive.
Matthew Holliday
May 5, 2015 at 15:11
have the prices spiked that much?
my 4690k was R2500.
motherboards atleast have options. but Id put money down on the motherboards for the new CPUs to be pretty intimidating.
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:14
Plus the ram. DDR4 is flipping expensive in comparison to 3.
Alessandro Barbosa
May 5, 2015 at 15:28
But do you /need/ DDR4 yet? I don’t think so
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:32
Nope, I doubt you will for many years when it comes to gaming.
konfab
May 5, 2015 at 15:59
The PS4 has DDR5… just saying 😉
Wraith
May 5, 2015 at 16:08
GDDR5… DDR5 does not exist as of yet (I believe).
Matthew Holliday
May 6, 2015 at 01:48
graphics cards use GDDR5, and have used GDDR5 since like, 2009 or something.
its not a ps4 exclusive thing.
Ivan Roši?
May 6, 2015 at 23:45
it have gddr5 … same as any current PC GPU have …. don’t mix gddr whit ddr … this 2 things are complitly different things and technology .. soon new r9 390x will have HBM memory who is much more faster then old gddr5.Ofc probably will cost like 2x ps4 😛
ogger151
May 7, 2015 at 00:07
In a couple months PC will have HBM memory for video cards… just saying
Matthew Holliday
May 6, 2015 at 01:47
since when has “need” been more important than “want”?
Ivan Roši?
May 6, 2015 at 23:47
ddr4 have a lot of potential … ofc all depends on developers of software
ReaperOfSquirrels
May 5, 2015 at 15:53
Rectron price (as of 31 March) is R3266 (incl) for the 4690K.
Which is why I’m looking at getting a PS4 rather than upgrading my PC.
FoxOneZA
May 5, 2015 at 16:11
You don’t need a K series CPU. I paid R2000 for my I5 2400 3 years ago and it can still handle games better than anything from AMD at the moment.
ReaperOfSquirrels
May 5, 2015 at 16:20
Yeah, I’m aware of that, I was just putting that there to share Trev’s point on pricing.
FoxOneZA
May 5, 2015 at 16:13
Intel mobo’s start from R399 and they will happily run an i7.
Daniel evans
May 5, 2015 at 15:19
well i dont really know what that currency of yours translates to in us/england but over here the processors are cheap (or at least considered cheap)
http://www.ebuyer.com/538178-intel-core-i7-4820k-3-70ghz-socket-2011-10mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80633i74820k
could you just not import or something?
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:25
That’s pretty much on par with what we pay locally because we’re usually lumped under the UK when it comes to tech pricing. Dollar prices are much cheaper comparatively, but then we get nailed with import charges which make it more expensive overall.
Daniel evans
May 5, 2015 at 15:29
ahh i see. well i do understand that AMD are cheaper and if rumours are true their next lot of processors are going to be pretty powerful as they have had a complete design overhaul. im just wondering if that will make AMD charge a premium for them.there is a good chance that if their processors finally match intel’s then we might not see cheaper prices from AMD anymore. unless intel and AMD go into a price war lol (which i guess could happen)
Matthew Holliday
May 6, 2015 at 01:50
pricing in general goes up and down for tech over here, some are similarly priced, others are massively overpriced in comparison.
but yeah, general rule of thumb is that EU prices are more than US.
FoxOneZA
May 5, 2015 at 16:14
Intel prices here are more closer to the dollar equivalent. Great bang for your buck compared to AMD which is a scarce in these parts.
Matthew Holliday
May 6, 2015 at 01:56
when i built my previous PCs, AMD was the cheaper option in the midrange department. by a pretty substantial amount.
at the time when intel i3’s dualcores / core2duos werent quite good enough and AMD was offering legit quadcores like the phenom x4 and APU range for the same prices.
(which also handle everything up till now, since the phenom x4 series is often the min req for games lately)
and their motherboards at the time were much more expensive as each was so specific. the AMD AM3 socket was way more accessible.
Nowadays with tech prices not decreasing at all and the dollar being so much stronger, intel is by far the better choice.
Matthew Holliday
May 6, 2015 at 01:46
the buying power of the pound/dollar/euro is much, much higher than the buying power of the rand.
same with salaries and minimum wages, your minimum wage of what? 6.50£? eclipses even our high paying jobs.
but the economics debate can get pretty complicated when you compare prices of your more basic stuff, like food and the general cost of living etc.
pricing over here is pretty sporadic. we have the i7 for cheaper than that site is offering it(by like 1%) but the Nvidia 970 is 30% more expensive here than it is in the US.
importing individual parts isnt viable as theyd be imported on international prices and subject to this and that and whatever. ends up costing more.
the tl;dr version is that tech today, over here, is 50% more expensive than it was 2 years ago. based purely on exchange rate increases and not including inflation.
Weanerdog
May 5, 2015 at 14:59
People who still run Sandy Bridge processors are half the problem with loadshedding. The other half is team reds GPUs. and maybe the eskom management over the past 20 years who did nothing in preventative maintenance and increasing production capacity in line with user consumption.
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 5, 2015 at 15:00
Shoosh, winter is coming. I need my AMD GPU.
Weanerdog
May 5, 2015 at 15:03
Want to warm the house
Admiral Chief
May 5, 2015 at 15:12
Indeed. I disconnect the side fan, and let it blow a comforting soothing breeze onto me when I game in the cold hours of the night
1DaveN
May 13, 2015 at 23:56
+1 on being happy with Sandy and hoping Skylake makes you want to upgrade. My sentiments exactly.