Topic of the Week: Broadwell / Skylake

Topic of the week will be our weekly forum discussion in which we we will discuss a certain topic. We at Ocaholic are always about community interaction and involvement whether this be through your "Rigs of the day" , Interaction towards or news and reviews or entering our regular competitions.

In reward of your opinions and feedback we are offering this week 2 prizes. You have the choice of game coodes for Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4 or The Crew. The winners will be the 2 users who left the most comments.
This weeks Prize is brought to you by CYBERPOWERPC.

This week's Topic - Broadwell / Skylake

During Computex, few manufacturers unveiled new Skylake motherboard based on Intel Z170 chipset. This motherboard's as well as CPU will be ready after the summer but meanwhile Intel put on market the new Broadwell CPU.

What do you think about Broadwell CPU? Which one is more interesting for you and why? In addition, you think that Broadwell can be useful for someone or will be a small fail?

PS: Spam, double posts, ... will be deleted.

Well to me it looks like Broadwell is basically Intels new mobile CPU, manufactured with 14nm process technology. Nevertheless I struggle to understand what Intel has been thinking when they've launched the i7-5775C and the i5-5675C processors. Well yes, they feature the new Iris Pro 6200 graphics unit, which is substantially faster than the HD 4600 as well as the HD 5200, but still, Skylake processors are just around the corner.

One could now argue that Intel might want to offer owners of Z97 the possibility to upgrade to a 14nm CPU. This is actually a possible scenario. In this case the BIOS of a Z97 motherboard needs updating to support the microcode of Broadwell CPUs. This is the same story like with Haswell and Z87. Personally I've never been a big fan of this. It's quite often that users struggle with this step. But nevertheless ... it is an option.

In general I think that the timing when Intel has launched Broadwell was just not right. With Skylake around the corner the momentum is with the new platform, especially considering that the new platform will bring some proper improvements. As I understood it to this point there will for example be a proper clock generator (an actual quartz!) on the motherboard again, which overclockers will love. Apart from that the motherboards can take care of the CPU VRM like "back in the good old days". Last but not least there are also new things coming when it comes to storage, which these days is the key to make systems faster.

Bottom line: I don't understand the timing regarding Broadwell launch and with the new Skylake platform just around the corner, nobody will spend money on a CPU for an old platform.

Hi !
Great topic. I was actually thinking about same since years.
Intel always release their tick-tocks after a certain period, but this time they got greedy and released it soon.
Now a days whenever Intel releases a new Generation of processors and chipsets, it comes with 5-10% performance gain only. Why ?
Because there is no one in competition.
There were days when AMD had strong CPU line ups like Athlon, Phenom and Intel was struggling to fight with them. Intel used to give the best innovation to users back back then. Now things have changed, Intel knows that consumers will take every shit that Intel will throw to them only for a 5-10 % performance gain. To me it is Intel's marketing strategy to make more and more out of business.
In terms of performance Broadwell is still a beast so why release a new Chipset with a fewer benefits. Intel should stop for a while and create something with greater benefits and performance increase.

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Great to see you join the topic Gandharv!

I think it would be terrible if Intel was to slow down on releasing new chipsets and CPUs. Intel is a technology driver and if they start to delay things it will affect the "innovation chain" of the entire industry. Just have a look what happen since AMD is not really competitive anymore. There haven't been new boards in years and basically users are stock with meanwhile old CPUs. If you want to do 3D rendering and stuff AMD just lacks behind. Sure 5 to 10% per year is not much, I definitely agree on that, and as a customer upgrading from the second latest to the latest generation I also feel fooled. But imo it's definitely better than not seeing any upgrades at all.

Apart from that usually people upgrade their system after 2 to 5 years of usage. Let's assume there is a new CPU every year that brings 5% more performance to the table then the upgrades would have the following effect:

Year 0: 100.00%
Year 1: 105.00%
Year 2: 110.25%
Year 3: 115.76%
Year 4: 121.55%
Year 5: 127.63%

So basically the dependency is exponential and luckily 5% is a worst case scenario. Let's do the same calculation with 7% increase:

Year 0: 100.00%
Year 1: 107.00%
Year 2: 114.49 %
Year 3: 122.50 %
Year 4: 131.08 %
Year 5: 140.26 %

Imo 30 percent after 4 years are pretty ok.

Thanks Rewarder !
I always feel happy with good people with great knowledge.
I agree what you mentioned.
But think this way, IMO Intel already have more advanced technology which they will release in 1-2 years. Because they know how to rip off consumer and make money through every release with little increment in performance.
Just like nVidia who had GTX 980 Ti before Titan X but they released it later because they first made money by releasing Fastest GPU for consumers with 12 Gigs VRAM.
These are two tech giants without a doubt and its sad to see them working for money rather than innovation.
I can bet Intel already have 6th Gen stuff ready, but first they will make money with current gen hardware with 5-10% performance increase.
Only if AMD or any other manufacturer give them competition, their future releases will come with more increase in performance TBH.
What are your views about it ?

Hi everyone !
Intel is doing progress day by day. I get excited whenever they release a new chipset or new gen of Processors. With every release they get improved and they offer best hardware in the market. Sad that there is no one in the market to give them a challenge. AMD is years behind Intel in processor technology right now. I hope we will see 7 nm products from Intel soon. Great performance with power savings.
Z170 chipset brings a lot of great features like PCIe storage drives and more.
That is the way to go Intel.

Hi !
I want to know if the winner of this week is announced or not.
Thanks !

Is the competition over ?
I need my game codes